THE  BAPTIST  HERITAGE 


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THE 

BAPTIST  HERITAGE 


BEING  THE  LECTURES  ON 
THE  JOHN  T.  CHRISTIAN  FOUNDATION 

AT  THE 

BAPTIST  BIBLE  INSTITUTE  IN  NEW  ORLEANS 

APRIL,  1922 

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By 

GEORGE  EDWIN  HORR,  D.  B.,  LL,  D. 

President,  The  Newton  Theological  Institution 


PHILADELPHIA 

THE  JUDSON  PRESS 


BOSTON 
KANSAS  CITY 


CHICAGO 

SEATTLE 


LOS  ANGELES 
TORONTO 


Copyright,  1923,  by 
GILBERT  N.  BRINK,  Secretary 

Published  September,  1923 


Printed  in  U.  S.  A, 


FOREWORD 


The  lectures  that  compose  the  chapters  of  this 
volume  were  given  in  April,  1922,  on  the  John  T. 
Christian  Foundation,  at  the  Baptist  Bible  Institute 
of  New  Orleans,  La.  Some  paragraphs  in  the  third 
chapter,  taken  from  my  Lowell  Lectures,  published 
in  the  volume  “  Religious  Life  in  New  England  ” 
(1915),  are  used  by  permission  of  the  Harvard  Uni¬ 
versity  Press. 

George  Edwin  Horr. 

The  Newton  Theological  Institution 
Newton  Center,  Mass. 

April  19,  1923 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  The  Early  European  Baptists .  l 

II.  The  English  Baptists  . . . .  26 

III.  The  Baptists  in  the  United  States .  54 


IV.  The  Baptist  Outlook 


85 


I 


THE  EARLY  EUROPEAN  BAPTISTS 

The  Anabaptists 

HE  age  of  the  Reformation  is  one  of  the  most 


complicated  and  fascinating  in  recorded  history. 
The  political  and  social  and  religious  conditions  of 
many  centuries  were  suddenly  subjected  to  strains 
that  remodeled  and  transformed  them  ail.  It  was 
the  age  of  the  Renaissance,  when  all  educated 
Europe  was  brought  under  the  spell  of  the  revival 
of  classical  learning ;  it  was  the  age  when  the  fall  of 
Constantinople  closed  the  ancient  trade-routes  to 
the  East,  and  compelled  the  merchants  of  the  Low 
Countries,  of  France,  and  Spain,  and  Italy  to  embark 
on  those  adventurous  voyages  which  resulted  in 
finding  a  way  to  India,  around  the  Cape  of  Good 
Hope,  and  gave  the  impulse  to  the  vast  enterprise  of 
Columbus  which  made  known  a  new  world;  it  was 
the  age  when  the  invention  of  printing  made  possible 
the  widest  diffusion  of  ideas :  it  was  an  age  when  the 
consciousness  of  nationality  was  giving  rise  to  new 
groupings  of  great  populations  into  compact  units; 
it  was  an  age  when  on  the  one  hand  Christendom 
was  narrowed  by  the  onrush  of  the  Turks  into  Cen¬ 
tral  Europe,  and  on  the  other  hand  widened  by  the 
discovery  of  the  Americas. 


1 


2 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


The  discovery  of  the  Americas  by  itself  was  suf¬ 
ficient  to  mark  the  dawning  of  a  new  era  in  Christen¬ 
dom,  for  it  was  like  the  introduction  of  a  new  planet 
into  the  solar  system,  changing  the  mutual  attrac¬ 
tions  and  repulsions  of  every  body  in  it.  But  this 
enormous  influence  was  reenforced  and  heightened 
by  the  events  which  I  have  just  mentioned. 

Until  recent  times  the  history  of  this  period,  for 
the  most  part,  has  been  written  in  view  of  the  great 
religious  revolt  which  we  know  as  the  Reformation. 
And  events  have  been  interpreted  almost  wholly  in 
the  interests  of  a  partisan  religious  propaganda. 
Within  the  last  twenty  years  many  scholars  have 
seen  that  the  religious  phase  of  the  first  half  of  the 
sixteenth  century  was  not  the  only  one  to  be  consid¬ 
ered,  and  so  we  now  have  histories  from  the  social 
and  political  and  economic  points  of  view.  Some  of 
these  writers  have  thrown  the  religious  aspect  of  the 
age  so  thoroughly  into  the  background  that  they 
almost  ignore  it,  but  this  is  a  position  that,  in  my 
opinion,  is  entirely  untenable.  The  religious  issue  is 
not  the  only  one  in  that  tremendous  period,  but  it  is 
central,  and  every  other  relationship  and  movement 
is  affected  by  it.  On  the  other  hand,  the  religious 
issue  cannot  be  adequately  interpreted  when  studied 
in  isolation.  It  must  be  brought  into  relation  with 
the  social,  economic,  and  political  forces  that  are 
manifest  in  the  period. 

But  most  of  the  older  historians  not  only  studied 
the  religious  issue  in  isolation,  but  they  seemed  to 
think  the  Luthern  Reformation  could  be  appraised 


The  Earl y  European  Baptists 


3 


correctly  apart  from  the  contemporaneous  religious 
movements.  Of  course  they  paid  some  attention  to 
the  Swiss  and  French  Reformations.  These  could 
hardly  be  ignored,  but  the  standard  histories  for  the 
most  part  treated  them  very  cursorily,  and  as  to  the 
great  Baptist  movement,  it  was  hardly  mentioned, 
except  in  derision. 

The  more  recent  church  historians,  however, 
have  seen  the  error  of  this,  and  they  have  sought 
to  put  the  Lutheran  Reformation  into  some  relation 
with  the  life  of  the  time,  as  seen  in  France  and 
Switzerland,  and  to  connect  it  with  parallel  move¬ 
ments  in  the  same  period. 

As  a  result  of  this  correct  attitude  the  story  of  the 
Baptists,  or  Anabaptists,  as  they  are  called  by  their 
enemies,  or  Re-baptizers,  because  they  repudiated 
infant  baptism,  and  baptized  only  those  who  made 
confession  of  their  faith,  no  matter  whether  or  not 
they  had  been  christened  in  their  infancy,  has  been 
thrown  into  salient  relief. 

Perhaps  there  is  no  matter  in  the  entire  range 
of  church  history  upon  which  modern  opinion  has 
undergone  such  a  radical  change,  as  in  the  estimate 
of  the  Anabaptists.  Even  Ranke,  writing  only  a  few 
years  ago,  appeared  to  regard  the  Munster  fanatics 
as  typical  of  the  whole  movement,  and  confused  the 
ideas  for  which  the  firebrand  Rothmann  stood  with 
those  of  Roger  Williams  and  the  Rhode  Island  pio¬ 
neers.  There  was  some  excuse  for  this  gross  misrep¬ 
resentation.  Most  of  the  authorities  upon  which  his¬ 
torians  relied  were  the  hostile  accounts  and  polemical 


4 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


treatises  of  bitter  opponents  of  the  Anabaptists,  and 
there  were  few  other  sources,  for  almost  univer¬ 
sally,  in  the  court  records  of  sentences  against  the 
Anabaptists,  it  was  prescribed  that  their  writings 
should  be  burned. 

Until  recently  our  only  source  for  the  text  of  the 
original  creed  of  the  Swiss  Baptists  was  the  contro¬ 
versial  pamphlet  which  Zwingli  wrote  against  it. 
Fortunately  he  quoted  each  article  before  answering 
it.  Piecing  together  these  quotations,  we  were  able 
to  reconstruct  the  creed.  But  there  has  been  dis¬ 
covered  recently  in  the  archives  of  the  Canton  of 
Schaffhausen  a  copy  of  the  original  creed  in  Ger¬ 
man.  It  is  greatly  to  the  credit  of  Zwingli  that  he 
gave  a  faithful  version  of  it.  The  only  changes  he 
made  result  from  his  Latinized  form. 

Recent  investigations  have  greatly  added  to  our 
source  of  material.  Such  works  as  Barges’  “  Boden- 
stein  ”  (Carlstadt)  have  put  many  matters  in  an 
entirely  new  light.  The  articles  in  the  last  edition 
of  the  Britannica,  Hasting’s  “  Encyclopedia  of 
Religion  and  Ethics,”  or  the  new  Schaff-Herzog 
could  not  have  been  written  a  few  years  ago.  Even 
yet  there  are  many  gaps  in  our  knowledge,  and  it 
is  quite  certain  that  the  archives  at  Vienna  contain 
invaluable  material  which  has  been  very  imperfectly 
explored. 

Most  of  the  older  historians  have  paid  far  too 
much  attention  to  attempting  to  trace  historical  con¬ 
tinuity  between  the  Baptists  and  different  sects  in 
the  Roman  Church  or  in  apostolic  times.  There  are 


The  Earl])  European  Baptists 


5 


undoubtedly  such  resemblances,  but  they  are  not 
necessarily  due  to  a  causal  time  connection.  Fre¬ 
quently  the  same  theory  has  occurred  to  different 
minds  which  have  had  no  communication  with  one 
another.  The  records  of  discovery  furnish  many 
illustrations  of  this.  There  is  nothing  strange  in  the 
fact  that  the  theory  of  natural  selection  should  have 
occurred  to  Darwin  and  to  Wallace,  working  entirely 
independently  of  one  another.  We  ought  not  to  be 
surprised  that  candid  minds  coming  freshly  to  the 
study  of  the  Scriptures  should  have  reached  similar 
conclusions  as  to  the  essential  Christian  doctrines. 
That  is  precisely  what  seems  to  have  taken  place  in 
the  Anabaptist  development. 

Professor  Lindsay  has  shown  the  error  of  the  com¬ 
mon  view  that  Luther  first  gave  Germany  the  Bible 
in  the  vernacular.  The  earliest  presses  in  Germany 
printed  many  more  editions  of  the  Bible  than  of  the 
classics.  Twenty-one  editions  of  the  Psalms  in  Ger¬ 
man  appeared  before  1509,  and  twenty-five  of  the 
Gospels  and  Epistles  before  1518.  No  fewer  than 
fourteen  (some  say  seventeen)  editions  of  the  whole 
Bible  were  printed  in  High  German  and  three  in 
Low  German  during  the  last  decade  of  the  fifteenth 
and  the  earlier  decades  of  the  sixteenth  century,  all 
translations  from  the  Vulgate.  These  German  ver¬ 
sions  were  largely,  but  by  no  means  completely,  dis¬ 
placed  by  Luther’s  translation.  The  Anabaptists 
generally  held  by  the  older  versions,  and  these  pre- 
Reformation  German  Bibles  are  said  to  have  been  in 
use  almost  two  hundred  years  after  the  Reforma- 


6 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


tion.  The  “  common  man/’  especially  the  artisan  of 
the  towns,  knew  a  great  deal  about  the  Bible.  It  was 
the  one  book  he  knew  and  pondered  over.  As  Cor¬ 
nelius  says : 1 

Fired  with  the  thoughts  created  in  their  minds  by  the  read¬ 
ing  of  the  Bible,  simple  men  felt  impelled  to  become  itinerant 
preachers.  The  “  call  ”  came  to  them  and  they  responded  at 
once  to  what  they  believed  to  be  a  divine  voice.  Such  men 
wandered  about  in  rude  homespun  garments,  often  bare¬ 
footed,  their  heads  covered  with  rough  felt  hats.  They 
craved  hospitality  in  houses  and  after  supper  produced  their 
portions  of  the  Bible,  read  and  expounded  them.  And  then 
vanished  early  in  the  morning.  We  are  told  how  Hans  Hut 
came  to  the  house  of  Franz  Strigel  at  Weiss  in  Franconia, 
produced  his  Bible,  read  and  expounded,  explained  the  neces¬ 
sity  of  adult  baptism,  convinced  Strigel,  the  house-father, 
and  eight  others,  and  baptized  them  then  and  there.  He 
wandered  forth  the  same  night.  None  of  the  baptized  ever 
saw  him  again,  but  the  little  community  remained  a  small 
band  of  Anabaptists. 

Whittier  has  described  their  methods  of  preaching 
the  gospel  in  a  beautiful  and  famous  poem : 

THE  VAUDOIS  MISSIONARY 

“  Oh,  lady  fair,  these  silks  of  mine  are  beautiful  and  rare — 
The  richest  web  of  the  Indian  loom  which  beauty’s  queen 
might  wear; 

And  my  pearls  are  pure  as  thy  own  fair  neck  with  whose 
radiant  light  they  vie; 

I  have  brought  them  with  me  a  weary  way, — will  my  gentle 
lady  buy?  ” 

1  Quoted  by  Lindsay  from  Cornelius,  Geschichte  des  Munsterischen 
AufruhrSj  11,  49. 


The  Earl ])  European  Baptists 


1 


The  lady  smiled  on  the  worn  old  man  through  the  dark  and 
clustering  curls 

Which  veiled  her  brow,  as  she  bent  to  view  his  silks  and  glit¬ 
tering  pearls; 

And  she  placed  their  price  in  the  old  man’s  hand  and  lightly 
turned  away. 

But  she  paused  at  the  wanderer’s  earnest  call, — “  My  gentle 
lady,  stay!  ” 

“  Oh  lady  fair,  I  have  yet  a  gem  which  a  purer  lustre  flings, 

Than  the  diamond  flash  of  the  jewelled  crown  on  the  lofty 
brow  of  kings ; 

A  wonderful  pearl  of  exceeding  price,  whose  virtue  shall  not 
decay, 

Whose  light  shall  be  as  a  spell  to  thee  and  a  blessing  on 
thy  way! ” 

The  lady  glanced  at  the  mirroring  steel  where  her  form  of 
grace  was  seen, 

Where  her  eyes  shone  clear,  and  her  dark  locks  waved  their 
clasping  pearls  between; — 

“  Bring  forth  thy  pearl  of  exceeding  worth,  thou  traveller 
gray  and  old, 

And  name  the  price  of  thy  precious  gem,  and  my  page  shall 
count  thy  gold.” 

The  cloud  went  off  from  the  pilgrim’s  brow,  as  a  small  and 
meagre  book, 

Unchased  with  gold  or  gem  of  cost,  from  his  folding  robe 
he  took ! 

“  Here  lady  fair,  is  the  pearl  of  price,  may  it  prove  as  much 
to  thee! 

Nay — keep  thy  gold — I  ask  it  not,  for  the  word  of  God  is 
free.” 

The  weary  traveller  went  his  way,  but  the  gift  he  left  behind 

Hath  had  its  pure  and  perfect  work  on  that  highborn  maid¬ 
en’s  mind. 


8 


1  he  Baptist  Heritage 


And  she  hath  turned  from  the  pride  of  sin  to  the  lowliness  of 
truth, 

And  given  her  human  heart  to  God  in  its  beautiful  hour  of 
youth ! 

But  those  who  caught  the  vision  and  carried  the 
fire  were  not  always  to  be  classed  with  “  the  com¬ 
mon  man/’  as  the  phrase  of  the  times  went.  Take 
for  example  the  “  Zwickau  prophets  ”  as  they  were 
called,  who  preached  Anabaptism  in  Wittenberg 
while  Luther  was  at  the  Wartberg,  where  he  was 
concealed  from  the  imperial  authorities  after  the 
Diet  of  Worms.  They  so  aroused  the  people  that 
Luther  broke  away  from  restraint  and  appeared  sud¬ 
denly  in  Wittenberg  to  confront  and  oppose  them. 
Who  were  these  prophets?  Assuredly  not  common 
men.  Their  leader  was  Carlstadt,  who  was  one  of 
the  most  honored  professors  at  Wittenberg,  and  had 
stood  beside  Luther  at  the  Leipsic  Disputation.  The 
preaching  gifts  of  Zwilling  had  led  to  his  appoint¬ 
ment  by  the  magistrates  as  principal  teacher  at 
Zwickau,  and  Melancthon  himself  had  gone  far  in 
the  Anabaptist  way  until  Luther's  “  shepherd's 
crook  "  rather  roughly  recalled  him  from  that  rocky, 
thorny,  and  perilous  way. 

This  was  the  group  of  cultivated  and  earnest  men 
who  were  the  forerunners  of  the  Anabaptist  move¬ 
ment  in  Germany. 

The  spread  of  similar  ideas  in  the  Swiss  cantons 
was  also  very  largely  due  to  the  work  of  educated 
men.  Roubli,  Stumpf,  and  Brotli  were  ordained 
preachers  in  the  Roman  Church.  Manz  and  Grebel 


The  Early  European  Baptists 


o 


were  men  of  learning  and  substantial  citizens  of 
Zurich;  while  Hubmaier  was  a  doctor  of  theology 
at  Ingolstadt,  a  university  chaplain,  and  preacher  at 
the  Cathedral  of  Regensberg. 

Undoubtedly  much  is  to  be  said  for  the  view  held 
by  the  older  historians  that  the  Anabaptists  were 
simply  the  Radicals  of  the  Reformation  who  pushed 
the  implications  of  Luther  to  their  logical  conclusion. 
Much  also  for  the  position  that  they  trace  directly 
from  the  reforming  movement  of  the  medieval  sects, 
which  subordinated  the  church  and  all  its  mechanism 
and  institutions  to  unmediated  relationship  to  God. 
Among  these  were  the  spiritual  Franciscans,  the 
Brethren  of  the  Common  Lot,  and  the  great  mystic 
fellowship,  but  I  think  it  will  be  found  that  the  prin¬ 
cipal  force  in  organizing  the  movement  and  in  deter¬ 
mining  its  main  features  came  from  a  fresh  reading 
of  the  Scriptures  now  made  available  by  the  art  of 
printing,  and  that  it  had  the  characteristic  features 
of  every  attempt  to  interpret  the  Scriptures  by  liter¬ 
ally  minded  men,  on  the  basis  of  isolated  individual 
judgment. 

Perhaps  their  greatest  indebtedness  to  the  mystics 
was  their  emphasis  upon  the  inner  light.  They  did 
not  commonly  hold  that  the  Scriptures  were  to  be 
understood  through  rational  processes  alone.  There 
was  a  divine  illumination  that  was  the  portion  of 
every  regenerate  of  soul.  Their  repudiation  of  infant 
baptism  did  not  depend  so  much  on  any  specific  text 
of  Scripture  as  upon  their  generic  conception  of  the 
Christian  life  as  the  outcome  of  regeneration  and  the 
B 


10 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


divine  gifts  that  accompany  it.  To  their  minds  it 
was  as  preposterous  to  receive  an  unregenerate  per¬ 
son  into  the  fellowship  of  the  saints  as  to  welcome  a 
deaf  man  into  a  society  of  musicians,  or  a  cripple  into 
an  athletic  association.  They  spent  but  little  time 
in  answering  the  common  arguments  from  infant 
baptism  of  households,  or  the  parallel  between  cir¬ 
cumcision  and  the  Christian  ordinance.  Their  infer¬ 
ence  was  not  from  stray  references  in  the  Scriptures 
susceptible  of  rival  interpretations;  they  held  that 
the  whole  trend  of  New  Testament  teaching  made 
for  their  contention  that  baptism  was  only  for  the 
regenerate.  They  denied  with  all  their  vigor  that 
baptism  was  in  any  sense  whatever  a  means  to 
^  regeneration.  They  held  always  that  it  was  a  sym¬ 
bol  of  an  experience  that  had  been  entered  into.  This 
is  not  to  say  that  here  and  there  may  be  found  those 
classed  under  the  general  name  of  Anabaptists  who 
did  not  firmly  hold  this  doctrine.  It  is  not  clear,  for 
example,  that  the  leaders  of  the  shameful  episodes 
at  Munster  held  it  consistently.  But,  by  and  large, 
the  name  given  in  opprobrium  justly  marks  the  car¬ 
dinal  doctrine  of  the  whole  party. 

The  other  Anabaptist  doctrines  hold  a  close  rela¬ 
tion  to  this  central  position.  The  ideal  was  that  of 
a  self-governing  congregation,  with  the  Bible  as  its 
law,  and  interpreted  literally.  The  bond  of  union 
between  believers  was  not  any  external  organization 
but  the  common  spiritual  experience  generated  by 
the  contact  of  the  human  soul  with  the  Christian 
revelation.  To  the  common  objection  that  this  doc- 


The  Early  European  Baptists 


1  1 


trine  opens  the  way  to  endless  varieties  of  opinion 
they  replied,  that  the  Bible  was  one  and  inner  light 
was  one,  and  that  they  would  rather  trust  the  Writ¬ 
ten  Word  and  the  Inner  Word  than  any  of  the  man¬ 
made  devices  to  secure  unity  which  had  so  often  been 
proved  injurious  and  oppressive. 

They  held  that  the  State  was  a  necessary  evil. 
Many  of  the  early  creeds  declare  that  a  Christian 
should  have  no  share  in  it,  nor  take  any  form  of 
oath.  They  were  thoroughgoing  passive  resistants, 
but  Hiibmaier,  their  most  representative  leader  in 
Switzerland  held  that  Christians  have  a  large  duty 
as  citizens,  and  Hlibmaier’s  pamphlet  on  “  The 
Sword  ”  reads  like  a  modern  answer  to  a  passivist. 

No  one  can  read  this  literature  without  a  vivid 
conviction  as  to  their  sympathy  with  those  under 
oppression — the  vast  laboring  class  of  Europe.  Bel- 
ford  Bax,  who  has  done  so  much  to  elucidate  the 
more  obscure  phases  of  Anabaptist  history,  probably 
is  too  anxious  to  prove  that  the  Anabaptists  are  the 
forerunners  of  the  modern  Socialists.  In  a  certain 
sense  that  is  true,  but  only  a  few  extremists  among 
them  held  to  the  compulsory  redistribution  of  prop¬ 
erty.  They  believed  that  the  Christian  man  would 
voluntarily  share  his  goods  with  the  more  needy  and 
that  the  fraternal  spirit  should  pervade  all  property 
rights. 

Their  attitude  in  regard  to  this  matter  closely 
resembled  that  of  the  early  church.  There  the  shar¬ 
ing  of  goods  was  in  no  sense  what  it  is  often 
called,  “  an  experiment  in  communism  ” ;  it  was  a 


12 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


spontaneous  manifestation  of  the  new  spirit  of  fel¬ 
lowship.  And  a  similar  realization  of  the  spirit  of 
the  Christian  koinonia  would  have  similar  results 
today. 

As  with  most  literally  minded  students  of  the 
Scripture  the  apocalyptic  books  of  Daniel  and  Reve¬ 
lation  had  a  peculiar  fascination  for  the  Anabap¬ 
tists,  but  though  millenianism  plays  an  important 
part  in  some  developments,  it  cannot  be  fairly  said 
that  it  ever  became  a  common  or  essential  doctrine 
of  their  churches. 

The  developments  of  the  German  and  Swiss  Ana¬ 
baptists  are  so  distinct  that  they  should  be  sharply 
separated.  The  evolution  of  the  German  section  was 
profoundly  influenced  by  a  social  crisis  and  social 
needs,  and  had  a  distinctly  socialistic  cast.  The 
period  of  the  Reformation  in  Germany  was  an  epoch 
marked  by  social  as  well  as  religious  reconstruction 
and  revolt.  The  standard  economists  have  always 
enlarged  upon  the  influence  of  the  Black  Death  in  the 
fourteenth  century  in  emancipating  labor.  All  over 
Europe  labor  had  become  scarce.  In  lands  like  En¬ 
gland  where  the  law  fixed  the  amount  of  the  laborer’s 
service  and  commercial  influences  had  substituted 
money  payments  for  services,  the  position  of  the 
peasant  was  greatly  strengthened;  but  in  Germany 
where  there  was  no  law  but  the  Roman  code  brought 
in  by  the  Church,  which  regarded  the  serfs  as  slaves, 
the  Black  Death  made  the  position  of  the  peasantry 
infinitely  harder.  The  overlord  made  up  for  the 
scarcity  of  labor  by  increased  exactions. 


The  Earl p  European  Baptists 


13 


The  revolt  of  Luther  against  Rome  mightily  heart¬ 
ened  the  German  peasantry.  Might  not  freedom 
from  the  Pope  mean  freedom  from  Charles  V,  the 
feudal  system,  and  Roman  law?  Did  not  the  asser¬ 
tion  of  the  rights  of  conscience  lead  to  the  assertion 
of  the  rights  of  the  whole  personality?  These  ques¬ 
tions  that  had  been  stirring  in  Europe  for  two  cen¬ 
turies  were  made  exigent  and  absorbing  by  the  ini¬ 
tial  success  of  the  Reformation.  The  famous 
“  Twelve  Articles,”  which  stated  the  demands  of  the 
Peasants,  today  look  modern  enough.  In  every  half- 
civilized  community  these  rights  are  at  once  con¬ 
ceded.  Luther  threw  in  his  lot  with  the  princes,  and 
in  the  Peasants'  War  that  followed  the  refusal  of 
reform,  he  incited  the  most  drastic  measures  against 
the  peasants.  Even  Gieseler  admits  that  “  no  traces 
of  Anabaptist  fanaticism  were  seen  in  the  Peasants' 
War  " ;  but  it  cannot  be  doubted  that  the  Anabap¬ 
tists’  revolt  against  the  prevailing  religious  order, 
whether  Roman  or  Lutheran,  encouraged  the  revolt 
against  social  and  economic  oppression.  Thomas 
Miinzer,  who  was  one  of  the  Zwickau  prophets, 
assailed  all  constituted  government,  and  advocated 
an  ideal  commonwealth  with  absolute  equality  and 
community  of  goods.  It  is  at  this  point  that  Ger¬ 
man  Anabaptism  separates  from  the  Swiss  attempts 
at  reform.  In  Germany  Anabaptism  was  tinged 
with  a  socialistic  cast,  which  is  wanting  in  the  cor¬ 
responding  movement  in  Switzerland. 

This  socialistic  type  reached  its  climax  in  Mun¬ 
ster  in  Westphalia  when  the  Lutheran  pastor,  Roth- 


14 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


mann,  with  several  prominent  citizens  endeavored 
to  set  up  a  theocracy,  after  banishing  the  bishop. 
Gross  premillenial  conceptions  began  to  prevail. 
One  of  the  leaders,  Bockhoff,  known  as  John  of 
Leyden,  declared  that  he  was  the  successor  of  David 
and  preached  communism  and  polygamy.  For  a 
year  Munster,  which  was  the  scene  of  the  wildest 
orgies,  held  out  against  the  besiegers,  and  when  the 
city  fell  it  was  followed  by  the  wholesale  massacre 
of  the  Anabaptists.  The  three  principal  leaders, 
however,  were  reserved  for  torture,  unexampled  in 
the  story  of  the  early  Christians. 

The  enemies  of  the  Anabaptists  have  always  made 
the  most  of  the  Munster  episode.  They  have  repre¬ 
sented  it  as  typical  of  the  whole  movement,  and  in 
the  early  days  of  the  New  England  settlement  the 
connotation  of  the  word  was  worse  than  that  of 
anarchist  or  bolshevist  today.  To  call  one  an  Ana¬ 
baptist  was  to  classify  him  as  outside  the  pale  of 
civilized  humanity. 

In  Germany  the  Baptists  have  never  outlived  the 
shame  of  Munster.  I  have  heard  German  professors 
more  than  once  raise  the  question  whether  or  not 
modern  Baptists  shared  at  all  the  ideas  and  practises 
of  these  crazy  fanatics.  But  it  is  now  admitted  by 
those  who  have  given  the  matter  any  serious  atten¬ 
tion,  that  it  was  only  a  radical  left  wing  of  the 
movement  that  sympathized  with  the  excesses  of 
Munster,  and  that  the  primary  interest  of  the  great 
body  of  German  Anabaptists  was  that  of  establish¬ 
ing  a  church  that  should  conform  as  closely  as  pos- 


The  Earl y  European  Baptists 


15 


sible  to  the  apostolic  model,  based  on  the  regenerate 
experience  and  the  close  fraternity  of  all  its 
members. 

In  Switzerland  the  development  was  almost  wholly 
religious.  The  group  that  disputed  at  Zurich  with 
Zwingli,  seeking  to  win  the  town  council  to  their 
views,  as  Zwingli,  in  a  similar  disputation,  had  won 
it  to  repudiate  the  Roman  Church,  were  gentlemen 
and  scholars.  Among  the  peasantry  of  Switzerland 
were  no  such  social  or  economic  grievances  as 
aroused  their  brethren  across  the  Lake  of  Constance 
to  madness.  The  development  at  Zurich  was  based 
on  a  fresh  and  careful  study  of  the  New  Testament. 

The  issue  between  Zwingli  and  his  friend  Hub- 
maier  turned  almost  wholly  on  infant  baptism. 
Zwingli  himself  did  not  occupy  a  clear  or  strong 
position.  In  his  exposition  of  the  articles  he 
defended  in  his  first  disputation,  he  makes  this  state¬ 
ment  : 2 

Although  I  know  as  the  Fathers  show,  that  infants  have 
been  baptized  occasionally  from  the  earliest  times,  still  it  was 
not  so  universal  a  custom  as  it  is  now,  but  the  common  prac¬ 
tise  was  as  soon  as  they  arrived  at  the  age  of  reason  to  form 
them  into  classes  for  instruction  in  the  Word  of  Salvation. 
And,  after  a  firm  faith  had  been  implanted  in  their  hearts  and 
they  had  confessed  the  same  with  their  mouth,  then  they  were 
baptized.  I  could  wish  that  this  custom  of  giving  instruction 
were  revived  today.  Otherwise  they  suffer  a  great  and  seri¬ 
ous  disadvantage  if  they  are  not  as  well  religiously  instructed 
after  baptism,  as  the  children  of  the  ancients  were  before 
baptism,  as  sermons  to  them  still  preserved  prove. 

2  “  Ulrich  von  Zwingli,”  Jackson,  p.  243. 


16 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


The  sentence  accorded  to  these  men  who  dared  to 
attack  infant  baptism  is  of  a  piece  with  the  intol¬ 
erance  of  the  times.  Zwingli  wrote  to  Vadian, 
March  7,  1526: 


It  has  been  decreed  this  day  by  the  Council  of  Two  Hun¬ 
dred  that  the  leaders  of  the  Anabaptists  shall  be  cast  into 
the  tower  and  be  allured  by  a  bread  and  water  diet  until 
they  either  give  up  the  ghost  or  surrender.  It  was  also 
added  that  they  who  after  this  are  immersed  shall  be  sub¬ 
merged  permanently.  [A  clear  indication  that  the  Swiss  Bap¬ 
tists  had  begun  to  practise  immersion.]  Your  father-in-law 
Senator  Jacob  Grebel,  father  of  Conrad — in  vain  implored 
mercy  for  Conrad. 

Conrad  Grebel  died  of  the  plague  that  year.  Manz, 
his  close  friend,  was  drowned  in  the  Lake  of  Zu¬ 
rich.  Htibmaier  was  burned  at  the  stake  in  Vienna, 
March  10,  1528. 

The  inevitable  question  is,  Why  did  Luther  and 
Melancthon  in  Germany  and  Zwingli  in  Switzer¬ 
land  fight  so  strenuously  for  infant  baptism,  which 
today  in  non-sacerdotal  churches  is  largely  an  inter¬ 
esting  survival.  The  fact  seems  to  have  been  that 
the  question  of  infant  baptism  involved  the  problem 
of  the  nature  and  constitution  of  the  church.  The 
Anabaptists  conceived  of  the  church  as  consisting 
solely  of  those  who  had  shared  the  experience  of 
regeneration.  Baptism,  they  said,  was  not  a  means 
to  this  experience,  but  a  confession  of  it.  The  early 
German  and  Swiss  reformers  found  it  impossible  for 
them  to  conceive  Church  or  State  as  separate  from 


The  Early  European  Baptists 


17 


one  another.  And  if  they  are  united,  it  is  almost 
inevitable  that  the  standard  for  admission  to  the 
church  and  to  citizenship  be  identical,  and  naturally 
enough  this  becomes  baptism.  Baptism  is  the  evi¬ 
dence  of  naturalization  in  both  bodies.  In  certain 
European  states  it  is  said  that  the  license  to  pursue 
an  infamous  trade  is  conditional  upon  the  appli¬ 
cant’s  having  a  baptismal  certificate.  Baptism  holds 
much  the  same  relation  to  a  State,  which  is  united 
to  a  Church,  that  circumcision  held  to  the  Hebrew 
theocracy.  As  in  the  Hebrew  State,  freedom  of 
choice  could  not  be  allowed  in  the  circumcision  of 
children,  without  leading  to  a  complete  break-up  of 
its  constitution,  so  it  was  with  infant  baptism,  when 
Church  and  State  were  really  one  body  as  they  were 
in  both  the  Roman  and  Lutheran  communities. 
There  is  abundant  evidence  that  all  the  leaders  of  the 
Reformation  realized  that  there  was  much  to  be  said 
for  the  Baptist  contention,  but  they  saw  that  they 
confronted  a  condition  and  not  a  theory,  and  that 
the  patriotic  was  subtly  merged  with  the  religious 
issue. 

The  extent  to  which  Anabaptism  became  an  issue 
in  Reformation  times  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  the 
Augsburg  Confession,  the  Decretals  of  Trent,  the 
Second  Helvetic,  the  Belgic,  the  Scotch,  the  West¬ 
minster  Confessions,  and  the  Formula  of  Concord, 
all  inveigh  against  it ;  and  it  is  not  going  too  far  to 
affirm  that  one  purpose  of  Calvin  in  his  “  Institutes  ” 
was  to  prove  to  Francis  I  that  the  Reformers  were 
not  all  Anabaptists  and  might  safely  be  tolerated. 


18 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


Modern  researches  have  revealed  the  extent  to 
which  Anabaptism  prevailed  in  Central  Europe  as  a 
result  of  the  persecutions  which  scattered  the 
leaders  far  and  wide.  A  map  like  that  which  accom¬ 
panies  Professor  Lindsay’s  “  History  of  the  Refor¬ 
mation  ”  is  a  revelation  to  those  who  have  regarded 
the  Anabaptists  as  an  obscure  and  neglectible  fac¬ 
tion.  In  the  Low  Countries  throughout  the  Rhine 
Valley,  and  in  a  broad  continuous  stretch  from 
Switzerland  through  Central  and  South  Germany, 
Austria,  and  Hungary,  and  Poland,  and  North  Italy 
were  important  Anabaptist  centers.  It  is  signifi¬ 
cant  that  the  important  Unitarian  congregations 
in  North  Italy  and  Hungary  owe  their  origin  to  Ana¬ 
baptist  preachers. 

The  persecutions  of  the  Anabaptists  assumed 
almost  incredible  proportions.  A  veritable  reign  of 
terror  prevailed  through  Central  Europe.  Keller  has 
shown  that  the  Austrian  authorities  not  only  made 
use  of  wholesale  executions  but  delivered  up  the 
peasants  into  the  power  of  their  mercenary  troops. 
From  1528  the  Swabian  League  sent  large  com¬ 
panies  of  armed  troopers  to  scour  certain  districts, 
giving  their  leaders  authority,  without  law  or  trial, 
to  put  to  death  the  fanatics  they  caught  and  to 
hunt  them  like  wild  beasts.  In  Bavaria,  where  the 
Anabaptists  were  very  numerous,  the  Duke  ordered 
that  those  who  recanted  should  be  beheaded,  and 
those  who  did  not  should  be  burned.  Buckle  in  his 
“  History  of  Civilization  ”  says  3  that  by  1546  thirty 

8  Vol.  1,  p.  189. 


The  Earl])  European  Baptists 


19 


thousand  persons  had  been  put  to  death  for  Anabap- 
tism  in  the  Low  Countries. 

Every  writer  with  whom  I  am  familiar,  whether 
hostile  or  friendly  to  the  Anabaptists,  dwells  on  their 
remarkable  heroism  in  face  of  the  most  cruel  tor¬ 
tures  and  painful  deaths.  Sometimes  sensitive  men 
and  women,  tortured  beyond  human  endurance, 
recanted,  but  usually  recanted  their  recantations 
and  with  serene  spirits  faced  beheading  or  burning. 

The  career  of  Hiibmaier,  the  accomplished  scholar 
and  professor,  the  intimate  friend  of  Zwingii,  is  a 
case  in  point.  After  the  disputation  of  December, 
1526,  the  Zurich  Council  demanded  that  Hiibmaier 
should  depart  from  the  city  or  recant  his  doctrine. 
In  the  meantime  messengers  had  arrived  from  the 
Emperor  Ferdinand  demanding  that  Hiibmaier 
should  be  delivered  up  to  them  for  punishment.  This 
the  Council  refused  to  do,  and  Zwingii  takes  great 
credit  to  himself  for  his  magnanimity.  Under  this 
pressure  Hiibmaier  consented  to  moderate  his  state¬ 
ments,  and  publicly  read  His  recantations  in  the 
Church  of  Our  Lady.  Zwingii  followed  with  an 
address.  Then,  to  the  consternation  of  all  Hiibmaier 
recanted  his  recantations,  attacked  infant  baptism, 
and  defended  the  baptism  of  believers  only.  He  was 
hurried  away  and  thrown  into  prison  to  be  kept  on 
bread  and  water  until  he  recanted.  Hiibmaier  says, 4 

The  imprisoned  were  told  they  would  be  kept  into  prison 
until  their  death  if  they  did  not  recant,  so  that  they  would 

4  Vedder,  p.  130. 


20 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


behold  neither  sun  nor  moon,  and  that  all  together,  the  living 
and  the  dead,  should  remain  in  that  dark  tower,  until  no  one 
remained  alive,  so  that  in  this  way  all  should  die  together, 
perishing  and  rotting  by  the  stench. 

Zwingli  grimly  says  Hubmaier  was  “  allured  ”  to 
recant  his  errors.  In  after  years  Hubmaier  was 
deeply  repentant  for  this  act.  The  Council  decreed 
that  he  should  leave  Zurich.  He  made  his  way  to 
Nicholsburg  in  Moravia  where  Hussite  doctrines 
prevailed.  Within  a  few  months  the  chief  ministers 
had  accepted  the  teachings  of  Hubmaier.  In  less 
than  a  year  nearly  twelve  thousand  persons  received 
believer’s  baptism.  In  1527  Hubmaier  was  seized 
by  the  Imperial  authorities.  Again  he  recanted  but 
at  the  end,  as  to  Cranmer  and  Savonarola,  strength 
was  given  to  him  to  meet  his  doom.  Three  days 
after,  his  devoted  wife,  Elizabeth  Hughline,  a 
woman  who  never  dreamed  of  recantation  and,  con¬ 
stant  to  the  very  last,  was  thrown  into  the  waters  of 
the  Danube. 

Many  attempts  have  been  made  by  those  Baptists 
who  seek  to  maintain  that  there  has  been  an  uninter¬ 
rupted  succession  of  Baptist  churches  from  the  apos¬ 
tles  to  the  present  time,  to  trace  the  lineage  of  En¬ 
glish-speaking  churches  through  the  Anabaptists 
and  the  Waldensians. 

The  truth  seems  to  be  that  under  the  rule  of  the 
Duke  of  Alva  and  the  hardly  less  exasperating  rule 
of  the  Calvinists  who  dominated  the  Synod  of  Dort, 
many  Anabaptists  found  a  refuge  in  the  Eastern 
counties  of  England  about  Norwich.  One  authority 


The  Early  FMropean  Baptists 


21 


places  their  number  as  large  as  thirty  thousand. 
They  were  tolerated  both  by  Elizabeth  and  James, 
and  it  was  in  their  reign  that  Robert  Browne,  influ¬ 
enced  perhaps  by  the  ideas  current  in  this  commun¬ 
ity,  worked  out  his  theory  of  the  church  which  he 
embodied  in  his  treatise  that  lies  near  the  sources 
of  the  modern  Congregational  and  Baptist  churches 
— the  pamphlet  “  Reformation  Without  Tarrying 
for  Anie.”  Prof.  Williston  Walker  has  stated  the 
exact  fact : 5 

Anabaptist  modes  of  thought,  imported  with  these  Hol¬ 
landers  into  their  new  home  in  England,  may  have  borne 
some  fruitage. 

I  have  said  nothing  about  the  mode  of  baptism, 
because  that  was  not  a  primary  issue  with  the  Ana¬ 
baptists.  Their  main  contention  was  as  to  the 
spirituality  of  the  church.  All  of  them  held  that 
baptism  could  only  be  administered  rightly  to  re¬ 
generate  persons.  Whatever  their  early  practise 
as  to  the  mode,  their  steady  drift,  as  they  studied 
the  Scriptures  and  yielded  to  its  authority,  was  to¬ 
ward  immersion.  But  the  great  issue  centered  about 
a  regenerate  church-membership  and  its  inevitable 
implications. 

In  this  country  the  direct  descendants  of  the  Ger¬ 
man  Anabaptists  are  the  Mennonites,  deriving  their 
name  from  Menno  Simons,  who,  more  than  any 
other  man,  rallied  and  unified  the  brotherhood,  after 
the  disgraceful  outbreak  at  Munster.  They  number 
about  eighty  thousand  communicants. 

5  “  History  of  the  Congregational  Church  in  the  United  States,”  p.  30. 


22  The  Baptist  Heritage 


By  many  historians  the  anti-Trinitarian  leaders 
of  the  sixteenth  century  are  classed  as  Anabaptists. 
There  is  no  dispute  that  the  Anabaptists  were 
opposed  to  the  rigid  doctrinal  definitions  of  the 
Greek  and  Roman  creeds.  Like  the  modern  Baptists, 
they  stopped  at  the  New  Testament  statements  and 
rested  in  them.  But  men  like  Denck  and  Hetzer 
of  the  Swiss  group  were  practically  anti-Trinita¬ 
rians.  Both  were  accomplished  classical  scholars. 
Luther,  without  giving  credit,  made  a  large  use  of 
their  translation  of  the  Prophets  of  the  Old  Testa¬ 
ment.  Denck  is  one  of  the  most  attractive  person¬ 
alities  of  the  entire  period.  His  essays  on  “  The  Law 
of  God  ”  and  “  On  the  True  Love  ”  deserve  a  high 
place  in  any  collection  of  devotional  literature.  Only 
the  latter  has  been  translated  into  English  by  the 
American  Mennonites.  Denck  passed  away  at  the 
early  age  of  thirty-two,  but  he  left  an  impression  on 
religious  thought  which  time  only  deepens.  Prof. 
Rufus  M.  Jones  in  his  “  Spiritual  Reformers  ”  pays 
Denck  a  beautiful  tribute.  Both  Faustus  Socinus 
and  Servetus  are  classed  with  this  group  of  Anabap¬ 
tists,  and  the  large  influence  of  Socinus  in  Transyl¬ 
vania  and  Hungary  is  one  of  the  forces  accounting 
for  the  existence  of  so  many  Unitarian  churches 
there.  Singularly  enough,  till  1818  the  existence  of 
these  Unitarian  churches,  with  something  like  sixty 
thousand  members,  appears  to  have  been  unknown 
to  English-speaking  Unitarians,  but  since  1860  Man¬ 
chester  College,  Oxford,  has  had  a  succession  of  stu¬ 
dents  from  these  churches.  Some  have  come  to  the 


The  Earl y  European  Baptists 


23 


Harvard  Divinity  School  and  to  Meadville.  The 
Hungarian  churches  are  usually  represented  at  the 
May  Anniversaries  in  Boston.  But  the  succession  of 
the  Anabaptists  in  America  is  represented  by  the 
congregationally  organized  communions — the  Con¬ 
gregational  (Trinitarian  and  Unitarian  churches), 
the  Universalists,  and  the  denomination  of  the  Bap¬ 
tists.  The  Baptists  have  preserved  most  of  the  fea¬ 
tures  of  the  Swiss  group.  There  is  probably  no  doc¬ 
trine  of  Hiibmaier  that  would  not  receive  the  hearty 
approval  of  the  average  Baptist  congregation. 

In  closing,  let  me  say  a  few  words  about  the  light 
that  the  Anabaptist  movement  throws  upon  the 
nature  and  limitations  of  the  great  Reformation  of 
the  sixteenth  century.  It  is  by  the  aid  of  such  con¬ 
trasts  that  the  real  character  of  a  movement  is 
thrown  into  salient  relief. 

1.  In  the  first  place,  the  Reformation  reveals  itself 
in  the  light  of  such  studies  as  totally  undemocratic, 
and  wanting  even  in  sympathy  with  the  religious 
rights  of  the  common  man.  Luther’s  appeal  to  the 
Christian  Nobility  is  a  noble  production.  Here,  and 
in  “  The  Freedom  of  the  Christian  Man  ”  we  see  the 
great  typical  German  reformer  at  his  very  best,  but 
the  reform  in  religion  that  he  contemplated  must  be 
accomplished  by  the  princes  who  were  to  impose 
their  faith  upon  their  people.  Such  a  statement  is 
not  too  strong  to  describe  the  action  of  the  Diet  of 
Augsburg  (1555)  which  established  the  principle 
cujus  regio,  ejas  religio,  which  meant  that  the  secu¬ 
lar  territorial  ruler  might  choose  between  the 


24 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


Romanist  or  Lutheran  faith,  and  his  decision  was 
to  bind  all  his  subjects.  If  a  subject  professed 
another  religion  than  that  of  his  prince  he  was  to  be 
allowed  to  emigrate.  I  admit  all  that  may  be  said 
in  defense  of  this  policy.  I  simply  want  to  point  the 
nature  of  the  policy  itself  which  made  the  Reforma¬ 
tion  hopelessly  undemocratic.  The  Anabaptist  doc¬ 
trine,  steadily  gravitating  toward  the  modern  view 
of  the  separation  of  Church  and  State,  recognized 
the  immediate  relation  of  the  soul  to  God,  and  made 
religion  consist  in  the  response  of  the  personality 
to  the  Christian  revelation.  A  man’s  religion  could 
not  be  controlled  by  the  State. 

2.  In  the  second  place,  Anabaptism  as  contrasted 
with  other  Reformation  positions  emphasized  the 
distinction  between  the  sacramental  and  the  evan¬ 
gelical  construction  of  Christianity.  Without 
expressing  any  judgment  of  these  views  I  wish  sim¬ 
ply  to  point  out  that  the  Anabaptists  in  a  thorough¬ 
going  way  antagonized  the  sacramental  view.  Their 
more  careful  exponents  did  not  speak  of  “  valid  bap¬ 
tism,”  a  term  that  is  essentially  a  Romanist  phrase. 
They  held  the  Zwinglian  view  of  the  Supper.  They 
repudiated  the  whole  ex  opere  operato  theory  of  the 
sacraments.  Logically,  they  had  deep  affinities  with 
the  Quaker  position.  Indeed,  the  view  of  the  sacra¬ 
ments  taken  by  the  Friends  is  a  direct  product  of  the 
Anabaptist  agitation.  Modern  Baptists  and  the 
Friends  spring  from  the  same  parentage,  the  Bap¬ 
tists  from  the  earlier,  the  Friends  from  the  later 
stage  of  Anabaptism;  and  there  are  not  wanting 


The  Earl p  European  Baptists 


25 


today  some  significant  tokens  that  the  union  of  Bap¬ 
tists  with  the  Orthodox  Friends  would  be  easier  than 
with  any  other  denomination. 

It  is  not  difficult,  if  one  is  bent  on  doing  it,  to 
find  material  for  maligning  and  disparaging  the 
Anabaptists,  especially  if  the  evidence  is  carefully 
selected  and  taken  out  of  its  historic  connection,  but, 
looking  at  the  movement  as  a  whole,  students  of 
church  history  are  beginning  to  appreciate  it  as  pro¬ 
phetic  of  the  modern  and  spiritual  interpretation  of 
New  Testament  Christianity.  The  Reformers  dwelt 
too  exclusively  in  the  Pauline  Epistles.  The  Ana¬ 
baptists  did  much  to  recover  the  teaching  of  Jesus 
and  to  comprehend  its  human  bearings.  Their  con¬ 
ception  of  the  spirituality  of  the  Church  and  its 
separation  from  the  State,  their  ideas  of  the  new 
brotherhood  into  which  men  are  brought  by  a  com¬ 
mon  experience  of  God's  grace,  and  their  insistence 
that  the  rights  of  property  should  be  dominated  by 
the  law  of  love,  are  the  precise  marks  of  the  new 
interpretation  of  Christianity  in  which  forward- 
looking  men  rejoice.  In  spite  of  faults  and  limita¬ 
tions  may  we  not  apply  to  them  the  beautiful  words 
of  St.  Francis  de  Sales,  “  They  were  of  the  order  of 
the  saints,  and  all  the  saints  are  of  the  order  ”  ? 


c 


II 


THE  ENGLISH  BAPTISTS 

BROADLY  speaking,  a  line  drawn  between  the 
towns  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  England, 
marks  the  geographical  division  between  Conserva¬ 
tive  and  Progressive  England.  Oxford  stands  for 
the  old  ways  in  religion  and  politics.  Cambridge, 
ever  since  the  Reformation,  has  stood  for  moderation 
and  progress.  Archbishop  Laud  represents  the 
extreme  development  of  the  Oxford  temper,  while 
John  Milton  incarnates  the  spirit  of  Cambridge. 

The  counties  north  and  east  of  Cambridge,  espe¬ 
cially  Lincoln,  Nottingham,  Norfolk,  and  Suffolk, 
have  been  seats  of  Puritanism.  There  are  several 
reasons  for  the  responsiveness  of  this  whole  region 
to  progressive  ideas  in  religion.  If  one  will  exam¬ 
ine  the  map  which  George  Macaulay  Trevelyan  has 
added  to  his  work  on  the  Lollards,  he  will  see,  at  a 
glance,  that  these  counties  are  the  ones  in  which  the 
Lollards,  as  the  followers  of  Wyclif  were  called, 
were  strongest  in  the  fifteenth  century.  That  great 
man,  one  of  the  very  greatest  that  the  English-speak¬ 
ing  world  has  ever  produced,  had  not  only  put  the 
Bible,  in  his  inimitable  translation,  to  which  all  En¬ 
glish  versions  are  so  greatly  indebted,  within  the 
knowledge  of  the  English  people,  but  he  had  taught 
a  doctrine  of  personal  faith  as  the  condition  of  salva¬ 
tion  that  brings  him  very  near  to  the  evangelical 
26 


27 


The  English  Baptists 


heart  in  every  age.  In  this  map,  based  on  a  thor¬ 
ough  study  of  contemporary  records,  we  have  evi¬ 
dence  that  appeals  at  once  to  the  eye,  as  to  the  type 
of  religion  that  prevailed  in  these  regions. 

Again,  while  the  tradition  that  many  Waldensian 
refugees  found  asylum  here  may  not  be  so  fully  sub¬ 
stantiated  as  some  have  supposed,  it  is  beyond  con¬ 
troversy  that  the  political  and  religious  tyranny  of 
Philip  II  in  the  Netherlands  caused  a  large  emigra¬ 
tion  to  the  East  of  England,  and  that  these  emi¬ 
grants  were  more  or  less  infected  with  Anabaptism. 
One  authority  states  that  there  were  thirty  thou¬ 
sand  Anabaptists  in  England  by  1562.1 

This  is  the  region  that  became  the  seed-plot  of 
British  Nonconformity  and  Separatism.  Here  are 
Norwich  and  Boston,  and  Scrooby  and  Gainsbor¬ 
ough,  the  birth-places  of  English  Independency,  in 
its  two  forms  of  the  Congregational  and  Baptist 
denominations. 

Those  who  are  interested  in  maintaining  what 
may  be  called,  for  convenience,  successional  baptism, 
that  is,  that  there  has  been  an  unbroken  succession 
of  Baptist  churches  from  the  days  of  the  apostles  to 
the  present,  necessarily  make  much  of  the  relation¬ 
ship  of  these  Dutch  Anabaptists  in  the  east  of  En¬ 
gland  to  the  early  English  Baptist  churches.  The 
evidence  is  fragmentary  and  the  strongest  position 
that  one  who  desires  to  hold  this  position,  can  take  is 
to  say  with  Weingarten, 2 

1  Campholl,  “  The  Puritan  in  Holland.  England,  and  America,” 
I,  247f.,  488,  II,  180,  and  Griffis,  “The  New  World,”  1005. 

2  Revolutions  Kirchen  in  England s,  p.  20. 


28 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


The  perfect  agreement  between  the  views  of  Browne  and 
those  of  the  Baptists,  as  far  as  the  nature  of  the  church  is 
concerned,  is  certainly  proof  enough  that  he  borrowed  his 
ideas  from  them. 

Without  enlarging  upon  the  contribution  which 
The  Newton  Theological  Institution  has  made  to  the 
elucidation  of  the  beginnings  of  English  dissenting 
churches,  I  may  say  that  Mr.  Champlin  Burrage, 
who  graduated  from  Brown  University  in  1896  and 
from  Newton  in  1899,  held  our  Fellowship  in  Church 
History  for  1904-1907,  and  after  studying  at  Mar¬ 
burg  and  Berlin  received  the  degree  of  Litt.  D.  from 
the  University  of  Oxford  and  became  librarian  of 
Manchester  College,  Oxford,  and  afterwards  of  the 
John  Carter  Brown  Library  in  Brown  University. 
Mr.  Burrage  published  “  A  New  Year’s  Guift  ”  in 
1904,  “  The  True  Story  of  Robert  Browne  ”  in  1906, 
“  The  Retraction  of  Robert  Browne  ”  in  1907,  and 
“  The  Early  English  Dissenters  in  the  Light  of 
Recent  Research,”  in  1912. 

These  books  are  based  upon  manuscripts  of  Robert 
Browne  that  Mr.  Burrage  discovered  in  the  Bodleian 
Library,  and  in  the  Library  of  Lambeth  Palace, 
largely  through  his  familiarity  with  Browne’s  hand¬ 
writing.  The  “  Retraction  ”  was  published  under 
the  special  permission  of  the  Archbishop  of  Canter¬ 
bury. 

It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  the  result  of  Mr. 
Burrage’s  research  has  revolutionized  the  traditional 
conceptions  of  the  beginning  of  English  Dissent,  and 
because  of  his  findings  even  such  a  monumental 


The  English  Baptists 


29 


work  as  Dexter’s  “  Congregationalism  as  Seen  in 
Literature  ”  must  be  revised  and  materially  modified 
to  bring  it  into  harmony  with  undisputed  facts. 

One  serious  difficulty  that  confronts  the  critical 
student  of  Baptist  beginnings  previous  to  1582, 
comes  from  the  fact  that  the  term  “  Anabaptist  ” 
had  very  much  the  meaning  that  now  attaches  to  the 
epithet  “  Anarchist  ”  or  in  the  last  few  years  to 
“  Bolshevist.”  When  therefore  Bishop  Hooper 
writes  to  his  friend  Bullinger  that  the  Anabaptists 
give  him  much  trouble,  we  cannot  be  at  all  sure  of 
what  sort  of  people  he  has  in  mind.  All  that  we  can 
be  certain  of  is  that  they  were  at  odds  with  some 
points  of  his  teachings  and  practise.  And  it  should 
be  remembered  that  some  of  the  Anabaptists  were  f 
quite  as  notorious  for  their  theory  that  Jesus  did  not 
take  his  flesh  from  his  mother,  but  brought  his  body 
from  heaven  or  had  one  made  for  him  by  the  Word^y 
as  for  their  attitude  toward  infant  baptism. 

Previous  to  1582,  we  are  dealing  with  a  very  con¬ 
fused  situation.  Perhaps  our  historians  have  been  a 
little  too  ready  to  characterize  as  Baptists  those  who 
maintained  a  single  practise  or  a  doctrinal  position 
which  bears  some  resemblance  to  the  present  ideas 
of  the  denomination.  It  is  not  improbable  that  sev¬ 
eral  like-minded  believers  united  in  a  common  ser¬ 
vice,  and  we  may  go  further  than  that  and  say  that 
they  may  have  organized  little  churches,  but,  as  his¬ 
torical  students,  we  cannot  point  to  any  one  of  them 
as  inaugurating  a  definite  movement,  or  as  the  fruit¬ 
ful  mother  of  churches. 


30 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


In  1582,  however,  we  stand  on  firm  ground  and  we 
come  in  contact  with  a  remarkable  man,  Robert 
Browne,  whose  character  and  contribution  to  relig¬ 
ious  thought  have  only  been  made  clear  during  the 
last  few  years. 

Robert  Browne  (1530  C  ?] -1636)  was  born  a  gentle¬ 
man,  in  the  English  sense  of  the  term.  His  direct 
ancestor,  five  generations  back,  had  come  from 
Calais,  where  he  had  acquired  a  fortune.  He 
founded  the  hospital  at  Stamford  for  “  decayed 
tradesmen,”  which  still  exists.  His  son  built  the 
Saints’  Church  in  Stamford,  and  presented  it  to  the 
parish.  The  family  married  into  the  nobility,  and 
Lord  Burleigh,  Elizabeth’s  great  minister,  acknowl¬ 
edged  Robert  Browne  as  his  kinsman.  Browne  grad¬ 
uated  from  Cambridge  A.  B.  in  1572. 

He  was  deeply  religious,  and  had  a  varied  experi¬ 
ence  as  teacher  and  unlicensed  preacher.  He 
received,  however,  a  license  to  preach  from  the  Arch¬ 
bishop  of  Canterbury,  but  he  thought  so  lightly  of 
it  that  one  copy  he  lost,  and  the  other  he  threw  into 
the  fire.  As  a  preacher  for  a  few  months  at  the 
“  Bennet-Church  ”  in  Cambridge,  he  gave  an  ink¬ 
ling  of  what  was  working  in  his  mind  by  inveighing 
against  “  the  calling  and  authorizing  of  preachers 
by  bishops.”  Subsequently  he  removed  to  Norwich, 
the  center  of  the  Dutch  immigration,  where  it  is  tol¬ 
erably  certain  that  he  came  in  contact  with  the  Ana¬ 
baptists.  At  Norwich  his  views  crystallized  about 
two  or  three  main  positions — that  a  Christian  church 
should  be  composed  of  believers,  and  that  the  call  of 


The  English  Baptists 


31 


their  spiritual  leader  rested  not  with  the  bishops  but 
with  the  local  church,  and  mingled  with  all  was  his 
revolt  against  prescribed  services  and  read  prayers 
of  the  English  Church.  What  he  wanted  was  a  spiri¬ 
tual  reformation,  and  gradually  he  reached  the  con¬ 
clusion  that  “  the  kingdom  of  God  was  not  to  be  be¬ 
gun  by  whole  parishes,  but  rather  of  the  worthiest, 
be  they  ever  so  few.”  Browne's  own  account  of  his 
ideas  of  the  English  Church  service  is  sufficiently 
direct  and  spicy  as  to  account  for  considerable  of  the 
opposition  with  which  he  met.  For  instance  this  is 
one  of  his  descriptions  of  the  Church  of  England 
service : 3 

Their  stinted  service  is  a  Popish  bead-roll  full  of  vain  repe¬ 
titions  (as  if  seven  paternosters  did  please  the  Lord  better 
than  six)  and  as  if  the  chattering  of  a  pie  or  parrot  were 
much  more  the  better,  because  it  is  much  more  than  enough. 
Their  tossing  to  and  fro  of  psalms  and  sentences  is  like  ten¬ 
nis  play,  whereto  God  is  called  a  judge  who  can  do  best  and 
be  most  gallant  in  his  worship,  as  by  organs  solfaing,  prick- 
song,  chanting,  busing,  and  mumbling  very  roundly  on 
diverse  hands.  For  the  ministers  and  people  are  bridled  like 
horses,  and  everything  appointed  to  them  like  puppies,  as  to 
hear,  read,  answer,  kneel,  sit,  break  off  .  .  .  The  whole 

service  is  broken,  disordered,  patched,  taken  out  of  the  mass- 
book,  and  a  dumb  and  idle  ministry  maintained  thereby,  yea, 
a  vain  worship  without  knowledge  or  feeling. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  this  is  a  harsh  style  of 
preaching.  His  followers,  however,  increased,  and 
more  than  once  Browne  was  imprisoned,  but  released 
through  the  powerful  influence  of  his  kinsman,  Lord 

3  “  True  and  Short  Declaration,"  Sig.  B. 


32 


1  he  Baptist  Heritage 


Burleigh.  The  most  significant  of  Browne’s  little 
books,  four  or  five  in  number,  are,  “  A  Book  which 
Sheweth  the  Life  and  Manner  of  all  True  Christians, 
and  How  Unlike  They  Are  unto  Turks,  Papists  and 
Heathen  Folk  ”  and  “  A  Treatise  of  Reformation 
without  Tarrying  for  Anie.”  Both  these  tracts  were 
printed  at  Middleburg  in  Holland  in  1582,  whither 
Browne  had  gone,  by  the  aid  of  the  Dutch  merchants 
in  Norwich,  with  a  little  group  of  his  followers. 

In  1584,  Browne  returned  to  Stamford  and  made 
a  journey  to  Scotland,  and  expressed  the  opinion 
that  the  best  reformed  towns  in  Scotland  were 
not  so  good  morally  as  the  worst  places  in  England. 
During  one  of  his  absences  his  first  child,  Joan,  was 
born.  On  his  return  he  found  that  the  child  had 
been  christened  at  All  Saints,  Stamford.  This  was 
not  at  all  pleasing  to  him,  and  he  began  to  teach  that 
it  was  not  lawful  to  attend  the  services  of  the  En¬ 
glish  Church.  In  one  of  the  periods  of  mental  de¬ 
pression  to  which  Browne  appears  to  have  been 
subject,  Lord  Burleigh  and  Browne’s  father  seem 
to  have  cooperated  with  Archbishop  Whitgift  to 
induce  him  to  return  to  the  Church  of  England. 
They  succeeded,  and  from  1591  to  1638  he  was  rec¬ 
tor  of  A  Church,  one  of  Lord  Burleigh’s  livings. 

For  all  practical  purposes  Browne’s  career  ended 
in  1591.  Probably  he  did  his  best  in  his  new  posi¬ 
tion,  for  he  was  a  conscientious  man,  and  may  have 
been  of  some  real  value  to  the  little  hamlet.  He 
appears  to  have  employed  a  curate,  during  the  whole 
period  of  his  incumbency.  It  is  doubtful  if  he  ever 


33 


The  English  Baptists 

m—,— i  —  1^1— i  ■■  i Tir-~i 1 1 1 —————— —i  ■  —ii  ■  i  — — — — —  i  ~ 


lifted  up  his  voice  in  the  church  of  which  he  was 
rector. 

The  records  of  A  Church  are  not  in  Browne’s 
handwriting  from  1616  to  1626.  Prof.  Vernon  Bart¬ 
lett,  of  Mansfield  College,  Oxford,  has  suggested  that 
Browne  may  have  formed  a  covenanted  company  in 
his  parish  at  A  Church,  during  this  period,  and 
because  of  it  have  been  deprived  of  his  rectorship. 
Several  such  cases  of  secret  separatism  are  known. 
Browne’s  first  wife  died  in  1610.  In  1618  he  mar¬ 
ried  again  and  built  an  addition  to  his  thatched 
house,  which  is  known  as  “  the  old  chapel.”  The 
chimney  bears  the  date  of  1618  which  coincides  with 
the  date  of  his  marriage  to  Joane  Story  in  All  Saints, 
Stamford,  where  the  record  may  now  be  found. 
These  facts  may  point  to  the  conclusion  that  Browne 
never  departed  inwardly  from  his  first  insight.  He 
may  have  gathered  a  covenanted  company  of 
believers  and,  with  the  little  fortune  that  came  to 
him  by  marriage,  built  this  commodious  room  for 
their  worship. 

The  character  of  Browne  is  a  strange  puzzle.  He 
was  probably  a  highly  sensitive  man  deficient  in 
strength  of  will,  but  he  had  just  and  true  flashes  of 
insight,  and  these  make  his  little  book,  “  Reforma¬ 
tion  without  Tarrying  for  Anie,”  a  landmark  in  the 
history  of  modern  religious  thought.  Let  me  in  a 
few  words  try  to  summarize  Brownie’s  doctrine.  His 
main  proposition  is  that  Christ  is  the  Head  of  the 
church.  In  answer  to  the  question,  “  Who  today 
speaks  for  Christ?  ”  he  says,  not  the  bishops  who 


34 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


had  done  too  much  evil  to  make  that  answer  reason¬ 
able,  but  the  voice  of  the  whole  regenerate  company, 
guided  by  the  elders  and  the  “  forwardest,”  by  which 
he  means  those  most  advanced  in  the  Christian  life. 
Dr.  R.  W.  Dale  has  well  said  that  Browne  believed 
that  through  this  assembly  of  regenerate  souls 
Christ  speaks  and  they  are  to  set  up  his  kingdom. 

Such  a  position  today  seems  to  evangelical  Chris¬ 
tians  like  a  platitude,  but  in  1582  it  was  revolution¬ 
ary.  If  you  had  asked  the  average  Englishman  in 
1582  if  he  were  a  Christian,  he  would  have  looked 
at  you  with  amazement,  and  would  have  replied, 
“  Why,  I  am  an  Englishman,  I  was  baptized  in 
infancy,  I  live  in  this  parish,  and  I  am  a  member  of 
the  Church  there.”  Now  Robert  Browne  repudiated 
this  whole  position.  He  says  little  about  infant  bap¬ 
tism,  but  he  claims  that  the  church  is  composed 
solely  of  believers,  and  that  the  English  parish  sys¬ 
tem  does  not  count  in  the  kingdom  of  God.  There  is 
involved  in  this  central  position  the  great  doctrine  of 
the  spirituality  and  democracy  of  the  church, 
through  which  Christ  speaks  and  works. 

For  a  discredited  man  Robert  Browne  exercised 
wide  influence  on  English  religious  thought  in  his 
own  day.  The  “  Brownists  ”  became  too  numerous 
to  be  ignored.  They  are  specifically  mentioned  by 
Lord  Bacon  and  Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  and  in  his  last 
sermon  to  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  Pastor  Robinson  of 
Leyden  warned  them  not  to  suffer  themselves  to  be 
called  Brownists,  not  because  they  had  not  followed 
Browne,  but  because  of  the  evil  of  such  labels. 


The  English  Baptists 


35 


It  is  impossible  to  trace  the  diffusion  of  the 
Brownists  throughout  England,  but  it  is  clear  that 
there  were  several  scattered  groups  of  them  through¬ 
out  the  East  of  England  and  in  the  city  of  London, 
which  ever  since  the  days  of  Wyclif  has  been 
friendly  to  evangelicalism.  Two  neighboring  vil¬ 
lages  in  the  north  of  Lincoln — Scrooby  and  Gains¬ 
borough — became  the  seed-plots  of  movements  that 
became  world-wide  in  their  influence.  At  first  the 
Brownists  in  these  two  places  appear  to  have  met 
together,  but  before  long  they  became  two  separ¬ 
ate  congregations.  The  one  at  Scrooby  with  Clyf- 
ton  and  Robinson  as  pastors,  and  the  other  at  Gains¬ 
borough  with  John  Smyth  as  pastor.  Both  were 
Separatist  churches  of  the  Congregational  order. 
The  Scrooby  congregation  became  the  Pilgrim  Com¬ 
pany  that  settled  at  Leyden  and  then  in  1620  came 
to  Plymouth,  Mass.,  in  the  Mayflower — the  world- 
famous  “  Pilgrim  Fathers.”  From  the  second  or 
Gainsborough  congregation  under  the  leadership  of 
Smyth  and  his  associate  Thomas  Helwys,  we  trace 
the  first  Baptist  church  organized  in  England,  the 
history  of  which  deserves  more  adequate  attention. 

This  John  Smyth  was  a  unique  character.  Bishop 
Creighton  says, 

None  of  the  English  Separatists  had  a  finer  mind  or  a  more 
beautiful  soul  than  John  Smyth,  none  of  them  succeeded  in 
expressing  with  so  much  reasonableness  and  consistency  their 
aspirations  after  a  spiritual  system  of  religious  belief  and 
practise,  none  of  them  founded  their  opinions  on  so  large  and 
liberal  a  basis. 


36 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


Smyth  received  the  M.  A.  degree  from  Cambridge  in 
1593,  and  in  1600  he  was  elected  lecturer  or  preacher 
to  the  city  of  Lincoln,  but  did  not  hold  this  position 
after  October  13,  1602,  though  only  a  few  months 
before  the  City  Council  had  assured  him  a  salary 
of  £40  a  year  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  We  do  not 
know  just  what  opposition  had  risen  against  Smyth, 
though  he  was  a  man  of  such  positive  views  and 
plain  speaking  that  his  ways  were  never  in  smooth 
places.  Two  small  volumes  of  his  printed  sermons 
still  remain,  one  discovered  by  Professor  Whitsitt 
in  the  library  of  Immanuel  College,  Cambridge, 
and  the  first  edition  of  the  other  is  in  Regent's 
Park  College  Library.  The  first  is  an  exposition  of 
the  Twenty-second  Psalm  and  the  second  of  the 
Lord’s  Prayer. 

From  1602,  when  Smyth  lost  his  lectureship  at 
Lincoln,  to  1605,  when  he  openly  separated  from  the 
Church  of  England,  his  comings  and  goings  are 
difficult  to  trace.  Probably  he  spent  much  time  in 
conferring  with  like-minded  people,  some  of 
them  certainly  belonging  to  the  English  clergy  and 
others  high  placed  in  the  nobility,  for  Smyth  was  a 
competent  scholar,  with  an  excellent  university 
standing,  and  many  doors  were  open  to  him,  but 
in  1605  the  troubled  waters  of  his  life  began  to 
run  clear,  and  he  drifted  to  that  region  in  the  north 
which  is  like  a  wedge  between  Lincoln  and  Yorkshire. 
This  is  the  district  of  Bawtry,  Austerfield,  Scrooby, 
and  Gainsborough.  In  all  these  villages  and  in 
many  of  the  manor  houses  an  extreme  form  of 


I  he  English  Baptists 


37 


Puritanism  found  its  home.  Probably  those  who 
were  sympathetic  with  the  revolt  against  what  they 
called  the  evils  of  the  English  Church  had  no  regu¬ 
lar  place  of  meeting,  but  Scrooby  and  Gainsbor¬ 
ough,  about  ten  miles  apart,  became  the  two  cen¬ 
ters,  and  in  1606  this  group  divided  into  two 
churches.  John  Robinson  and  Richard  Clyfton 
became  pastors  of  the  church  at  Scrooby,  subse¬ 
quently  to  be  known  as  the  Church  of  the  Pilgrim 
Fathers,  and  John  Smyth  of  the  church  at  Gains¬ 
borough.  It  is  a  moot  point  whether  the  occasion 
of  this  division  may  not  have  been  the  departure 
of  the  Gainsborough  group  for  Amsterdam,  in  1606. 
It  is  at  least  doubtful  whether  the  two  churches 
existed  contemporaneously  side  by  side.  William 
Bradford  has  given  a  memorable  account  of  the 
organization  of  the  church  before  the  division  in 
1606.  He  writes :  4 

So  many  therefore  of  the  professors  as  saw  the  evil  of 
these  things  in  these  parts  and  whose  hearts  the  Lord 
had  touched  with  a  heavenly  zeal  for  his  truth,  they  shook 
off  this  yoke  of  anti-Christian  bondage  and  as  the  Lord’s  free 
people  joined  themselves,  by  a  covenant  of  the  Lord,  into 
a  church  estate,  in  the  fellowship  of  the  Gospel  to  walk 
in  all  his  ways,  made  known,  or  to  be  made  known,  accord¬ 
ing  to  their  best  endeavors  whatsoever  it  should  cost  them. 

The  view  that  a  church  rests  upon  a  covenant 
between  its  members  is  a  departure  in  ecclesiastical 
history  which  has  received  far  too  little  attention. 
The  Old  Testament  precedent  from  Nehemiah  prob- 


4  “  History  of  Plimouth  Plantation,”  p.  13. 


38 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


ably  is  not  the  germ  from  which  the  theory  grew, 
but  is  a  convenient  bit  of  evidence  to  support  a  posi¬ 
tion  that  rested  on  other  grounds.  Pastor  Robin¬ 
son  of  Leyden  put  this  view  of  the  church  in  an  ulti¬ 
mate  form  when  he  said : 5 

We  hold  and  affirm  that  a  company  consisting  though 
but  of  two  or  three  separated  from  the  world  .  .  .  and 

gathered  into  the  name  of  Christ  by  a  covenant  made  to 
walk  in  all  the  ways  of  God  made  known  unto  them  is  a 
Church,  and  so  hath  the  whole  power  of  Christ. 

It  is  worth  noting  that  these  believers  not  only 
pledged  themselves  to  walk  in  the  ways  of  the  Lord 
already  made  known  to  them,  but  in  ways  “  to 
be  made  known.”  It  will  be  recalled  how  this  atti¬ 
tude  figures  in  the  farewell  sermon  of  Pastor  Rob¬ 
inson  to  the  Pilgrims  when  they  were  leaving  Ley¬ 
den  in  1620.  Winslow  paraphrased  that  sermon  in 
these  famous  words: 

We  are  now  ere  long  to  part  asunder,  and  the  Lord 
knoweth  whether  he  should  ever  live  to  see  our  faces  again: 
but  whether  the  Lord  had  appointed  it  or  not,  he  charged 
us  before  God  and  his  blessed  Angels,  to  follow  him  no 
further  than  he  had  followed  Christ.  And  if  God  should 
reveal  anything  to  us  by  any  other  instrument  of  his,  to 
be  as  ready  to  receive  it,  as  ever  we  were  to  receive  any 
truth  by  his  ministry.  For  he  was  very  confident  the  Lord 
had  more  truth  and  light  yet  to  break  forth  out  of  his  holy 
Word. 

To  these  men  the  faith  once  delivered  to  the  saints 
was  not  a  coin  of  definite,  fixed  value,  but  a  seed 

6  Robinson’s  Works,  II  :  132. 


39 


The  English  Baptists 


containing  in  itself  the  promise  of  illimitable 
harvests. 

Both  the  Scrooby  and  the  Gainsborough  compa¬ 
nies  appear  to  have  reached  Amsterdam  about  the 
same  time,  the  first  under  the  leadership  of  Clyfton 
and  the  second  under  that  of  Smyth.  Robinson 
did  not  go  over  until  1609  after  the  Scrooby  com¬ 
pany  had  removed  to  Leyden.  During  1607  the  opin¬ 
ions  of  Smyth  became  more  radical.  He  published 
a  little  book,  “  Principles  and  Inferences  Concern¬ 
ing  the  Visible  Church.” 

We  now  turn  to  another  group  which  became  the 
center  of  influences  that  deeply  affected  the  English 
Non-conformity.  The  city  of  London  from  the  days 
of  Wyclif  had  been  favorably  disposed  toward  evan¬ 
gelical  views  of  the  gospel.  We  are  not  surprised 
that  the  seed  sown  by  Robert  Browne  produced  its 
harvest  here.  In  the  Harleian  Miscellany  there  is 
a  record  of  the  deposition  of  a  witness  taken  about 
1588.  He  is  describing  a  religious  meeting  of  peo¬ 
ple  whom  he  thoroughly  understands.  He  said: 

In  the  summertime  they  met  together  in  the  fields,  a  mile 
or  more  about  London.  There  they  sit  down  on  a  bank, 
and  divers  of  them  expound  out  of  the  Bible  so  long  as 
they  are  there  assembled.  In  the  wintertime  they  assemble 
themselves  by  5  o’clock  in  the  morning  at  that  house  where 
they  make  the  conventicle  for  that  Sabbath  Day,  men  and 
women  together.  There  they  continue  in  the  kind  of  prayers 
and  exposition  of  the  Scripture  all  the  day.  They  dine 
together;  after  dinner  make  collection  to  pay  for  the  diet, 
and  what  money  is  left  some  of  them  carry  to  the  prison, 
where  any  of  their  sort  be  committed.  In  the  prayer  one 


40 


7  he  Baptist  Heritage 


speaketh,  and  the  rest  do  groan  or  sob  or  sigh,  as  if  they 
would  wring  out  tears,  but  say  not  after  him  that  prayeth. 
Their  prayer  is  extemporal.  They  teach  that  all  stinted 
prayers  and  read  service  is  but  vain  babbling  in  the  Lord’s 
sight,  and  hath  neither  promise  of  blessing  nor  edification, 
for  that  they  are  but  cushions  for  such  idle  Priests  and 
Atheists  as  have  not  the  Spirit  of  God,  and  therefore  to  offer 
up  prayers  by  reading  or  writing  unto  God  is  plain  idolatry 
.  .  .  In  all  their  meetings  they  teach  that  there  is  no 

Head  or  Supreme  Governor  in  the  Church  of  God  but  Christ, 
and  that  the  magistrate  hath  no  authority  to  appoint  min¬ 
isters  in  the  Church,  nor  to  set  down  any  government  for 
the  Church  which  is  not  commanded  in  God’s  word.  They 
teach  that  a  private  man  may  preach  to  beget  faith,  and 
now  that  the  office  of  the  Apostles  is  ceased,  there  needeth 
not  public  ministers,  but  every  man  in  his  own  calling  is  to 
preach  the  gospel  .  .  .  They  hold  it  unlawful  to  baptize 

children  amongst  us,  but  rather  choose  to  let  them  go  unbap¬ 
tized. 

Associated  with  this  group,  or  with  one  like  it,  was 
John  Greenwood,  A.  B.,  Cambridge  1580-81,  who 
became  convinced  of  the  unscriptural  character  of 
Episcopacy,  and  Henry  Barrowe,  A.  B.,  Cambridge 
1569-70,  who  had  entered  on  the  practise  of  the  law 
with  the  promise  of  distinction.  He  even  attracted 
the  attention  of  Lord  Bacon,  who  describes  his  con¬ 
version.  He  says :  c 

Barrowe  led  a  wild  and  ungodly  life.  But  walking  one  day 
in  London,  with  one  of  his  boon  companions,  he  heard  a 
preacher  at  his  sermon  very  loud,  as  they  were  passing  his 
church,  upon  which  he  proposed  to  his  companion  that  they 
should  go  in. 

c  Works,  IT,  507. 


The  English  Baptists 


41 


God  so  blessed  what  they  had  heard  that,  to  quote 
Lord  Bacon,  the  fast  young  barrister 

made  a  leap  from  a  vain  and  libertine  youth  to  a  preciseness 
in  the  highest  degree,  which  alteration  made  him  very  much 
spoken  of. 

These  two  friends,  Greenwood  and  Barrowe, 
devoted  themselves  to  a  study  of  the  church  and  sub¬ 
stantially  reached  the  conclusion  of  Robert  Browne. 
Browne’s  writings  had  been  in  circulation  about 
four  years.  Both  these  friends  were  executed  in 
1592.  They  are  mentioned  by  name  in  Bradford’s 
“  Dialogue.”  7 

The  conception  of  church  government  reached  by 
these  friends  was  a  combination  of  the  democracy 
of  Robert  Browne,  and  the  Presbyterianism  of  the 
Calvinists.  And  they  put  their  conclusions  in  a  little 
tract,  “  The  True  Description  out  of  the  Word  of 
God  of  the  Visible  Church.”  8  It  is  clear  that  the 
London  group  was  organized  as  a  church  in  1592 
with  Francis  Johnson  as  pastor  and  John  Greenwood 
as  teacher. 

Francis  Johnson  had  been  expelled  in  1589  from 
the  University  of  Cambridge,  of  which  he  was  a  Fel¬ 
low  (1585),  for  his  Presbyterianism,  but  he  found 
a  comfortable  post  as  pastor  of  the  English  Church 
in  Amsterdam.  He  seems  to  have  prowled  about  the 
printing-offices  in  Amsterdam  a  good  deal,  and 
lighted  upon  one  of  Greenwood  and  Barrowe’s  tracts. 

T  Young’s  Chronicles,  p.  427. 

8  Dort,  1589. 

D 


42 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


He  was  appointed  the  agent  of  the  English  am¬ 
bassador  to  intercept  these  books  at  the  press  and 
have  them  burned.  He  saved  from  the  fire  only  two 
copies.  But  looking  them  over  changed  the  course 
of  his  life.  He  became  convinced  that  the  writers 
were  in  accord  with  the  Scripture.  He  resigned  his 
position,  went  to  London,  sought  Barrowe  in  prison. 
After  the  execution  of  Greenwood  and  Barrowe, 
proceedings  were  dropped  against  the  congregation 
on  the  understanding  that  they  would  leave  the  coun¬ 
try,  but  the  authorities  kept  their  hands  on  Francis 
Johnson  and  his  brother  George.  The  emigration 
of  this  group  to  Amsterdam  gives  us  the  London- 
Amsterdam  Church,  in  some  sense  the  mother- 
church  of  British  Non-conformity. 

Our  main  interest  in  this  story,  from  the  point  of 
view  of  Baptist  development,  is  that  when  Smyth 
went  up  to  Cambridge,  Francis  Johnson  had  com¬ 
pleted  his  college  course  and  was  Smyth’s  tutor. 
The  undisputed  date  for  the  organization  of  the  Lon- 
don-Amsterdam  Church  is  1592,  and  Johnson  was 
acknowledged  as  its  pastor  though  he  did  not  reach 
Amsterdam  until  1597.  We  can  imagine  the  keen 
interest  of  Smyth  in  the  development  of  the  religious 
ideas  of  his  old  friend  and  teacher  with  whom  he 
must  have  had  many  interviews  in  London. 

I  have  dwelt  on  this  episode  to  show  that  Baptist 
ideas  of  the  organization  of  the  church  did  not  come 
from  the  interpretation  of  the  Scriptures  held  by 
any  one  man.  These  conceptions  were  widely  enter¬ 
tained.  They  were  working  like  leaven  in  several 


The  English  Baptists 


43 


different  groups  and  only  gradually  came  to  organ¬ 
ized  expression. 

When  Smyth  reached  Amsterdam  it  would  have 
been  natural  for  him  and  his  party  to  unite  with 
the  Johnson  Church.  It  is  a  moot  point  whether  or 
not  he  did  so.  At  any  rate  it  was  not  for  long,  and 
in  1608  his  work  “  The  Differences  of  the  Church  of 
the  Separation  ”  shows  that  his  breaking  off  com¬ 
munion  with  the  London-Amsterdam  Church  was  on 
grounds  that  would  hardly  commend  themselves  to 
the  average  Christian.  They  were  that  translations 
of  the  Scriptures  should  not  be  brought  into  the 
church,  but  that  the  original  Hebrew  and  Greek 
only  should  be  used;  that  only  believers  might  con¬ 
tribute  to  church  funds — an  anticipation  of  the 
“  tainted  money  ”  discussion.  In  the  meantime  it  is 
clear  that  Smyth  became  familiar  with  the  Men- 
nonite  view  of  the  church,  and  in  March,  1609,  he 
published  his  tract  “  The  Character  of  the  Beast.” 
In  this  he  contends  that 

infants  ought  not  to  be  baptized  because,  first,  there  is 
neither  precept  nor  example  in  the  New  Testament  of  any 
infants  that  were  baptized  by  John  or  Christ’s  disciples,  and 
second,  Christ  commanded  to  make  disciples  by  teaching 
them,  and  then  baptize  them. 

Smyth’s  “  The  Character  of  the  Beast  ”  is  one  of  the 
ablest  attacks  upon  infant  baptism  ever  written. 

We  now  come  upon  another  issue.  Smyth  had  not 
so  far  repudiated  the  traditional  doctrine  of  the 
priesthood  as  to  be  willing  to  abandon  successional 


44 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


baptism.  He  held  that  what  has  been  called  “  valid 
baptism  ”  could  only  be  administered  by  one  who  had 
been  “  validly  ”  baptized.  There  must  be  a  tactual 
succession  back  to  the  apostles.  Where  was  this 
succession  to  be  found?  If  the  Roman  Church  had 
it,  it  was  too  corrupt  for  him  to  receive  it  at  their 
hands.  Did  the  Anabaptists,  even  the  Mennonite 
form,  have  it?  He  did  not  know.  And  so  he  cut 
the  knot,  just  as  Roger  Williams  did  years  later  in 
Providence,  and  baptized  himself.  John  Robinson, 
Pastor  of  the  Pilgrim  Church  at  Leyden,  says, 

Mr.  Smyth  baptized  first  himself  and  next  Mr.  Helwys,  and 
so  the  rest  making  their  particular  confessions. 

A  long  discussion  has  taken  place  as  to  the  mode 
of  baptism  Smyth  employed.  Positive  evidence  is 
not  conclusive,  and  the  disputants  have  usually 
reached  conclusions  that  are  in  accord  with  their 
denominational  affiliations. 

Subsequently  Smyth  became  convinced  that  the 
Amsterdam  Mennonites  were  a  church  and  had  true 
baptism ;  certainly  they  practised  believer’s  baptism, 
but  it  seems  to  me  that  they  varied  in  the  mode — 
sometimes  it  was  by  aspersion  and  sometimes  by 
immersion.  But  the  mode  was  not  an  issue  with 
Smyth.  What  he  wanted  was  believer’s  baptism  and 
successional  baptism.  These  he  thought  he  had  in 
the  Mennonite  Church.  And  the  first  was  primary, 
for  he  wrote  at  this  time,  “  I  deny  all  succession 
except  in  the  truth.”  Forty-one  persons  joined  with 
him  in  seeking  this  new  affiliation,  but  the  Mennon- 


The  English  Baptists 


45 


ites  never  received  him.  They  looked  at  Smyth  as  a 
disturber.  At  length  in  1615  thirty-one  remaining 
members  entered  the  Mennonite  communion. 

But  the  faction  of  the  Smyth  Church  that  did  not 
go  with  him  in  his  changes  organized  with  Thomas 
Helwys  as  pastor.  Helwys  was  of  excellent  family, 
but  not  a  college  graduate.  Apparently  he  was 
well  to  do  for  Smyth  boasted  that  he  had  never 
taken  any  of  Helwys’  money.  In  1611,  Helwys  with 
his  church  returned  to  England,  because  their  coun¬ 
trymen  were  without  the  light  of  truth.  They  came, 
they  said,  to  preach  the  free  love  of  God  and  the 
all-sufficient  sacrifice  of  Christ.  We  know  what  sort 
of  a  gospel  they  brought.  A  study  of  the  Four  Con¬ 
fessions  issued  by  the  Smyth-Helwys  group,  the  first 
English  Baptist  creeds,  discovers  their  positions. 
Their  general  theological  attitude  is  Arminian.  They 
repudiate  infant  baptism  and  maintain  that  all 
infants  “  are  undoubtedly  saved,  which  is  to  be 
understood  of  all  infants  who  live  in  the  world.” 
They  repudiate  apostolic  succession,  whether  applied 
to  the  ministry  or  specifically  to  the  ordinances. 
They  declare  that 

the  magistrate  by  virtue  of  his  office  is  not  to  meddle  with 
religion  or  matters  of  conscience,  nor  compel  men  to  this  or 
that  form  of  religion  or  doctrine. 

Many  of  the  Dutch  Anabaptists  in  London  united 
with  this  congregation,  which  is  commonly  regarded 
as  the  first  English  Baptist  church.  Professor 
Masson  in  his  life  of  Milton  treats  with  sympathy 


46 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


and  insight  the  doctrine  of  this  church  as  to  relig¬ 
ious  liberty.  In  a  familiar  passage  he  says : 

This  obscure  Baptist  congregation  seems  to  have  become 
the  depository  for  all  England  of  the  absolute  principle  of 
liberty  of  conscience,  as  distinct  from  the  more  stinted  princi¬ 
ple  advocated  by  the  general  body  of  the  Independents  .  .  . 
It  was,  in  short,  from  this  dingy  little  meeting-house  some¬ 
where  in  old  London  that  there  flashed  out  first  in  England 
the  absolute  doctrine  of  religious  liberty. 

The  repressive  policy  of  James  I  bore  hardly  on 
the  Baptists,  and  among  the  pleas  for  redress  sent  to 
the  King  was  one  by  Leonard  Busher,  who  appar¬ 
ently  was  a  member  of  the  Helwys  Church.  It  is 
entitled  “  Religious  Peace,  or  a  Plea  for  Liberty  of 
Conscience.,,  His  argument  for  religious  liberty  is 
as  convincing  as  John  Smyth’s  argument  against 
infant  baptism,  but  incidentally  it  throws  light  on 
the  mode  of  baptism  practised  by  the  Helwys 
Church.  The  date  is  1614.  It  says: 

And  therefore  Christ  commanded  his  disciples  to  teach  all 
nations,  and  baptize  them;  that  is  to  preach  the  word  of  sal¬ 
vation  to  every  creature  of  all  sorts  of  nations  that  are 
worthy  and  willing  to  receive  it  and  such  as  shall  willingly 
and  gladly  receive  he  has  commanded  to  be  baptized  in  water, 
that  is  dipped  for  dead. 

Three  lines  of  argument  have  been  used  to  show 
that  we  should  not  accept  this  account  of  statement 
which  shows  that  immersion  of  believers  was  prac¬ 
tised  by  this  congregation  at  this  date.  It  is  said 
that  the  “  Plea  ”  was  printed  in  Holland  and  does  not 
show  the  English  practise,  but  it  purports  to  show 


The  English  Baptists 


47 


the  English  practise,  and  for  the  matter  of  print¬ 
ing  practically  the  entire  controversial  literature 
except  that  maintaining  the  position  of  the  Estab¬ 
lished  Church  came  from  Dutch  presses.  To  print 
such  things  in  England  was  to  incur  peril  of  impris¬ 
onment,  confiscation,  or  banishment.  Secondly,  it  is 
said  that  the  purpose  of  the  “  Plea  ”  is  to  commend 
religious  liberty,  and  the  allusion  to  baptism  is  inci¬ 
dental.  Most  lawyers  would  say,  I  think,  that 
instead  of  weakening  the  evidence,  its  incidental 
character  makes  it  all  the  stronger.  In  the  third 
place,  it  is  claimed  that  the  Helwys  Church  may 
have  believed  that  immersion  was  the  true  mode  of 
baptism,  while  not  practising  it,  but  it  seems  hardly 
fair  in  the  interests  of  a  theory  to  make  this  devoted 
band  guilty  of  an  hypocrisy,  which  was  not  of  the 
slightest  conceivable  profit. 

We  need  not  accept  all  the  accounts  of  enthusiastic 
denominational  historians  as  to  the  increase  of  the 
number  of  churches  in  fellowship  with  the  Helwys 
congregation.  Undoubtedly  the  seed  was  scattered, 
and  by  1622  there  were  seven  or  eight  such  groups. 
They  were  all  Arminian,  and  were  recruited  in  part 
from  the  Dutch  Anabaptists  in  England,  especially 
from  the  Mennonites.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that 
for  many  years  they  retained  some  distinctively 
Mennonite  practises,  such  as  foot-washing.  In  En¬ 
gland  these  churches  are  known  as  General  Baptists 
in  opposition  to  the  Particular  or  Calvinistic  Bap¬ 
tists.  By  1660  the  membership  had  reached  20,000. 
During  the  eighteenth  century  several  of  these 


48 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


churches  became  Unitarian.  The  Calvinists  asserted 
that  this  defection  was  on  account  of  their  Armin- 
ianism.  But  the  Wesleyan  revival  recalled  the 
churches  generally  to  the  evangelical  position,  and 
the  New  Connection  of  General  Baptists  organized 
in  1760  is  closely  associated  in  the  Baptist  Union 
with  the  Particular  Baptists.  It  now  remains  to 
speak  of  the  rise  and  growth  of  the  Calvinistic  or 
“  Particular  ”  Baptists — the  group  that  has  become 
by  far  the  largest  and  most  influential. 

In  1616,  four  years  after  Helwys’  return  from 
Amsterdam,  Henry  Jacob,  Oxford  M.  A.,  1586,  who 
seems  to  have  followed  Johnson  as  pastor  of  the 
English  colony,  returned  from  Holland  thoroughly 
imbued  with  Johnson’s  idea  of  the  church.  He  estab¬ 
lished  his  congregation  at  Southwark,  London.  It  is 
in  this  church  more  than  any  other  that  we  may 
best  study  the  discussions  which  give  rise  to  the 
separation  between  modern  Congregationalists  or 
Independents  and  Calvinistic  Baptists.  Jacob  him¬ 
self  emigrated  to  Virginia  in  1624,  and  he  was  suc¬ 
ceeded  by  John  Lathrop,  Cambridge  A.  B.  Three 
matters  agitated  this  group,  viz.,  believer’s  baptism, 
successional  baptism,  and  immersion  as  the  mode. 
This  church  was  the  field  on  which  these  questions 
were  threshed  out.  Parties  arose  within  the  church, 
and  it  was  repeatedly  divided  and  subdivided.  There 
were  those  who  held  to  infant  baptism,  successional 
baptism,  and  immersion — the  position  of  the  Church 
of  England;  others  held  to  believer’s  baptism,  and 
successional  baptism;  others  to  believer’s  baptism 


The  English  Baptists 


49 


and  immersion.  Every  possible  permutation  of 
these  positions  is  found  in  this  congregation.  The 
so-called  Kiffin  manuscript,  discovered  by  Principal 
Gould,  of  Regents  Park  College,  in  i860,  threw  the 
Baptist  world  into  a  heated  discussion  on  account  of 
the  report  of  the  division  that  took  place  in  this 
church  in  1640,  in  which  it  is  stated  that  a  party  in 
the  church  was  convinced  that  baptism  should  be  by 
immersion,  and  to  quote  the  exact  words,  “  none  hav¬ 
ing  then  so  practised  in  England  to  professed 
believers,”  and  that  baptism  must  be  transmitted  by 
succession  from  the  apostles,  and  so  sent  over  one  of 
their  members  to  Holland,  who  received  baptism 
from  the  Dutch  Church,  and  then  on  his  return  bap¬ 
tized  the  members  of  his  party. 

There  was  nothing  particularly  novel  about  this 
record.  Crosby,  in  his  “  Plistory  of  the  Baptists  ” 
published  in  1788,  had  stated  practically  the  same 
thing.  Only  Crosby  instead  of  saying  “  None  having 
then  so  practised  in  England  to  professed  believers  ” 
says,9 

Some  in  this  nation  rejected  the  baptism  of  infants,  yet 
they  had  not,  as  they  knew  of,  revived  the  ancient  custom  of 
immersion — 

a  very  different  thing.  It  is  by  no  means  easy  to  rec¬ 
oncile  either  statement  with  the  undoubted  facts, 
especially  with  the  B usher  statement  of  1614,  though 
of  course  it  is  possible  that  the  rather  more  highly 
placed  members  of  the  Jacob-Lathrop  church  knew 

9  “  History,”  I,  101,  102. 


50 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


little  about  what  the  obscure  Helwys-Murton  con¬ 
gregation  were  holding  or  doing. 

But  our  main  concern  is  not  with  the  intricacies 
of  this  discussion,  but  to  point  out  that  from  it  there 
emerged  two  distinct  groups.  First,  those  who 
retained  infant  baptism  and  sprinkling  or  affusion 
as  the  mode,  and  who  now  constitute  the  modern 
Congregationalists  or  Independents,  and  secondly, 
those  who  repudiated  infant  baptism  and  practised 
immersion ;  these  last  now  constitute  the  modern 
Calvinistic  Baptists.  Successional  baptism  lingered 
longer  with  the  Baptist  than  with  the  Congregational 
group,  and  what  is  known  as  the  “  Landmark  ” 
movement  appears  to  have  been  a  recrudescence  of 
successional  baptism  in  America. 

The  organization  of  the  Baptists  around  three  doc¬ 
trines  which  had  been  in  process  for  half  a  century, 
now  took  an  impressive  form.  Religious  liberty, 
believer’s  baptism,  and  preservation  of  the  primitive 
mode  became  the  rallying-points.  These  questions 
were  wholly  in  the  realm  of  ecclesiology,  not  of 
theology.  Theologically  this  Calvinistic  group  had 
far  more  sympathy  with  the  theology  of  the  Thirty- 
nine  Articles  or  with  the  Westminster  Confession 
than  they  had  with  the  Arminianism  of  the  Helwys 
group.  Neal,  the  historian  of  Puritanism,  states 
that  in  1644  there  were  fifty-four  Baptist  congrega¬ 
tions  in  England — forty-seven  in  the  counties  and 
seven  in  London — practising  immersion. 

We  have  reached  a  landmark  in  Baptist  history 
when  we  come  to  the  Confession  of  Faith  issued  by 


The  English  Baptists 


51 


these  fifty-four  churches  in  1644.  This  Confession, 
after  giving  an  exposition  of  Christian  doctrine 
according  to  the  Calvinistic  theology,  pronounces 
baptism 

an  ordinance  of  the  New  Testament,  given  by  Christ,  to  be 
dispensed  upon  persons  professing  faith,  who  upon  profession 
of  faith  ought  to  be  baptized,  and  afterwards  to  partake  of 
the  Lord’s  Supper. 

It  then  specifies  that  the  way  and  manner  of  dispens¬ 
ing  this  ordinance  is  dipping  and  plunging  the  body 
under  water. 

For  myself  in  these  days  when  the  mania  for 
creed-making  or  creed-tinkering  has  come  upon  so 
many  groups  in  all  denominations,  perhaps  I  may 
venture  the  opinion  that  it  is  safe  to  stand  in  the  old 
ways.  Arminianism  and  Calvinism  are  not  today  live 
issues.  Neither  has  been  answered,  both  have  been 
superseded.  Most  of  our  churches,  no  matter  what 
some  extremists  might  advocate,  do  not  propose  to 
disfellowship  faithful  men  who  are  seeking  to  serve 
Christ,  on  these  grounds.  For  my  part  I  would  be 
willing  to  take  both  the  Amsterdam  Confession  of 
1612,  and  the  English  Confession  of  1644  for  sub¬ 
stance  of  doctrine,  interpreted  in  the  light  God  gives 
us  today. 

I  shall  have  accomplished  my  purpose  in  this  sur¬ 
vey  if  I  have  made  it  clear  that  the  really  great 
movement  that  we  call  Baptist  history  in  Great 
Britain  and  her  colonies  does  not  trace  from  any  one 
man,  or  any  clear  line  of  physical  succession  from 


52 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


the  early  church.  The  succession  is  not  physical,  it 
is  spiritual.  It  is  what  John  Smyth  happily  called 
it,  “  a  succession  in  the  truth.”  I  have  no  doubt 
the  views  of  Baptists  have  always  been  held  by  some 
Christians.  Some  have  held  them  as  we  hold  them 
today,  others  have  held  them  in  different  proportions 
with  a  different  perspective.  But  what  happened  in 
England  in  that  great  age  of  Elizabeth  and  James 
and  of  the  Commonwealth  was  that  in  the  clash  of 
parties  views  held  in  solution  precipitated,  and  Pres¬ 
byterianism  was  hardened  into  the  Westminster  Con¬ 
fession,  and  the  doctrines  of  the  Baptists  were 
crystallized  in  the  Baptist  Confessions  of  1612  and 
1644. 

In  closing  may  I  say  a  word  about  the  men  who 
stand  foremost  in  this  movement.  It  is  entirely  too 
easy  to  characterize  them  as  fanatics,  or  as  hare¬ 
brained  enthusiasts.  That  would  be  very  mislead¬ 
ing,  and  I  want  to  guard  against  any  such  impres¬ 
sion  from  my  descriptions  of  their  views  or  work. 
The  ministers  were  gentlemen  and  scholars,  Robert 
Browne,  Richard  Clyfton,  and  John  Robinson,  John 
Smyth  and  Thomas  Helwys  and  John  Morton,  Henry 
Jacob  and  Henry  Jessey.  They  were  all  men  of  light 
and  leading.  And  even  if  at  times  men  like  Browne 
and  Smyth  seem  to  have  carried  their  logic  to  irra¬ 
tional  extremes,  we  must  remember  that  that  was 
the  drift  in  that  unsettled  age,  and  that  without 
exception  they  were  not  only  good  men,  but  men  of 
learning,  of  natural  gifts  of  leadership,  of  eloquence, 
and  of  personal  charm.  We  read  over  and  over 


53 


The  English  Baptises 


again  of  “  the  sweet  persuasiveness  ”  of  John  Smyth, 
whose  trenchant  pen  might  leave  another  impres¬ 
sion.  And  we  must  not  forget  one  of  the  most  inter¬ 
esting  personalities  of  them  all — not  a  Cambridge 
or  an  Oxford  man,  not  highly  placed  in  the  social 
world,  not  a  minister,  a  plain  sensible  merchant,  a 
typical  business  man — William  Kiffin.  A  poor  boy, 
robbed  by  his  guardians  of  his  inheritance,  he  made 
his  way  by  enterprise  and  business  capacity  until  he 
became  an  alderman  of  London,  and  a  very  rich  man. 
Being  convinced  that  the  Baptists  held  the  truth, 
he  identified  himself  with  this  despised  sect.  He 
was  thrown  into  jail  six  times  for  attending  Baptist 
meetings.  Everything  he  touched  prospered  finan¬ 
cially,  and  he  devoted  his  wealth  to  the  Baptist 
cause.  There  are  few  Baptist  enterprises  of  the 
period  that  did  not  feel  the  vivifying  touch  of  his 
benevolence.  And  he  did  not  confine  himself  to  the 
bestowal  of  his  fortune,  he  was  a  preacher  and  evan¬ 
gelist  and  threw  his  whole  soul  into  the  work  of  the 
kingdom.  This  was  the  type  of  man  who  carried  the 
feeble  and  despised  cause  to  its  place  in  the  religious 
life  of  England.  The  English-speaking  world  owes 
the  Brownes  and  the  Smyths  and  the  Kiffins  a  debt 
that  can  never  be  repaid. 


Ill 


THE  BAPTISTS  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 

IN  view  of  the  history  of  the  early  English  Bap¬ 
tists  it  is  not  strange  that  there  should  have  been 
an  infiltration  of  their  ideas  in  the  settlement  of  New 
England  and  of  Virginia. 

The  outstanding  illustration  of  this,  of  course,  is 
the  career  of  Roger  Williams.  John  Fiske  has 
admirably  described  the  character  of  Williams,  and 
his  great  contribution  to  religious  and  political 
thought  which  caused  Bancroft  to  class  him  with 
Newton  and  Kepler  as  a  benefactor  of  mankind. 
I  quote  Fiske’s  comprehensive  and  judicial  para¬ 
graph  :  1 

Among  all  the  Puritans  who  came  to  New  England  there 
is  no  more  interesting  figure  than  the  learned,  quick-witted, 
pugnacious  Welshman,  Roger  Williams.  He  was  over  fond 
of  logical  subtleties  and  delighted  in  controversy.  There 
was  scarcely  any  subject  about  which  he  did  not  wrangle, 
from  the  sinfulness  of  persecution  to  the  propriety  of  women 
wearing  veils  in  churches.  Yet  with  all  this  love  of  con¬ 
troversy  there  never  lived  a  more  gentle  and  kindly  soul. 
Within  five  years  from  the  settlement  of  Massachusetts  this 
young  preacher  had  announced  the  true  principles  of  religious 
liberty  with  a  clearness  of  insight  quite  remarkable  in  that 
age.  .  .  .  The  views  of  Williams,  if  logically  carried 

out,  involved  the  entire  separation  of  Church  from  State, 

1  “  The  Beginnings  of  New  England,”  pp.  114,  115. 

54 


55 


The  Baptists  in  the  United  States 


the  equal  protection  of  all  forms  of  religious  faith,  the  re¬ 
peal  of  all  laws  compelling  attendance  on  public  worship, 
the  abolition  of  tithes  and  of  all  forced  contributions  to  the 
support  of  religion.  Such  views  are  today  quite  generally 
adopted  by  the  more  civilized  portions  of  the  Protestant 
world,  but  it  is  needless  to  say  that  they  were  not  the 
views  of  the  seventeenth  century  in  Massachusetts  or  else¬ 
where. 

Many  attempts  have  been  made  to  remove  from 
the  authorities  of  Massachusetts  Bay  the  reproach 
of  having  banished  Williams  under  cruel  conditions. 
Dr.  Henry  M.  Dexter  is  probably  correct  in  his  con¬ 
tention  that  the  Massachusetts  Bay  Company  “  was 
simply  a  private  corporation  chartered  by  the  Gov¬ 
ernment  for  the  purposes  of  fishing,  real  estate 
improvement,  and  general  commerce; ”  Undoubtedly, 
the  Company  was  within  its  strictly  legal  rights  in 
banishing  Williams  or  any  one  else  to  whom  it  took 
a  dislike.  But  this  is  not  the  defense  of  the  banish¬ 
ment  put  forth  by  contemporaries.  They  knew  well 
that  the  Massachusetts  Bay  Company  was  far 
more  than  a  trading  corporation.  The  promotion  of 
a  profitable  stock  company  was  not  at  all  the  aspect 
of  the  enterprise  that  made  an  appeal  to  twenty  thou¬ 
sand  English  Puritans.  The  impulse  that  led  to  this 
great  movement  and  continued  throughout  it  was 
well  expressed  by  Rev.  Francis  Higginson  when  he 
said,2  “  We  go  to  practise  the  positive  part  of  church 
reformation  ;  and  propagate  the  Gospel  in  America; ” 

Bitterly  as  the  Baptists  suffered  from  the  Massa- 


2  Magnalia,  1629,  III,  sec.  1,  p.  12. 


56 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


chusetts  Bay  theocracy,  they  do  it  the  credit  of  not 
attributing  to  it  narrow  secular  motives.  John  Cot¬ 
ton  and  John  Winthrop  were  conscientious  men. 
They  did  not  apprehend  the  principle  of  religious 
liberty.  They  only  thought,  like  Saul  the  persecutor, 
that  they  were  doing  God  service. 

In  his  speech  on  the  dissolution  of  Parliament  in 
1655,  Cromwell  described  the  fault  of  both  Pres¬ 
byterians  and  Independents  when  he  said : 

Is  it  ingenuous  to  ask  liberty  and  not  give  it?  What 
greater  hypocrisy  for  those  who  were  oppressed  by  the 
bishop  to  become  the  greatest  oppressors  themselves  so  soon 
as  their  yoke  was  removed? 

History  is  rendering  a  tardy  justice  to  the  memory 
of  Williams.  The  circumstance  that  the  leaders  of 
the  Bay  Colony  were  almost  without  exception  uni¬ 
versity  men,  skilled  in  letters,  gave  them  a  marked 
advantage  in  impressing  their  views  upon  posterity. 
The  defenders  of  Williams  have  not  always  been  a 
match  for  their  opponents,  but  Williams  is  his  own 
best  defender.  A  man  who  could  win  and  hold  the 
friendship  of  Sir  Edmund  Coke,  John  Winthrop,  Sir 
Harry  Vane,  and  John  Milton,  and  enjoyed  “  close 
discourse  ”  with  Oliver  Cromwell,  is  his  own  best 
champion,  and  a  new  appreciation  of  Williams' 
personality  and  of  his  contribution  to  the  cause  of 
human  liberty  has  come  from  the  more  careful  study 
of  his  own  works. 

The  literary  style  of  Roger  Williams,  like  that  of 
John  Cotton,  is  somewhat  crabbed  and  involved. 


The  Baptists  in  the  United  States 


57 


They  wrote  with  haste,  and  poured  forth  their  ideas 
upon  paper  without  much  care  as  to  their  order 
or  best  expression.  But  occasionally  Williams,  in 
writing  on  religious  liberty,  is  conscious  of  wings 
and  takes  an  almost  lyrical  flight.  For  example,  in 
speaking  of  the  armies  of  truth  he  frames  a  sentence 
that  is  worthy  of  Milton  or  of  Jeremy  Taylor.  “  The 
armies  of  Truth,”  he  says,  “  like  the  armies  of  the 
Apocalypse,  must  have  no  sword,  helmet,  breast¬ 
plate,  shield,  or  horse,  but  what  is  spiritual  and  of  a 
heavenly  nature.” 

i  The  church  which  Williams  gathered  in  Provi¬ 
dence  has  generally  been  regarded  as  the  first  Bap¬ 
tist  Church  organized  in  America,  March  16,  1639, 
though  this  is  contested  by  those  who  hold  that  the 
church  organized  by  John  Clarke  at  Newport  ante¬ 
dates  this.  It  is  certain  that  those  who  had  been 
Baptists  in  England  found  that  living  was  more 
comfortable  in  Rhode  Island. 

We  should  not  omit  to  notice  that  Roger  Wil¬ 
liams’s  connection  with  the  Providence  church  was 
short.  He  parted  with  the  company  he  had  gathered 
because  of  his  doubts  about  the  validity  of  his  own 
baptism.  The  apostolic  succession  had  been  inter¬ 
rupted  and  apostolic  authority  had  ceased.  In  this 
curious  contention,  carrying  over  the  ideal  of  apos¬ 
tolic  succession  to  baptism,  as  the  Established 
Church  in  England  had  applied  it  to  the  ministry,  we 
have  the  echoes  in  America  of  the  discussion  which 
at  that  very  time  was  agitating  the  Jacob  Church 
in  London. 

E 


58 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


It  is  of  interest  to  note  that  Henry  Jacob  subse¬ 
quently  emigrated  to  Virginia ;  and  John  Lathrop  in 
1634,  accompanied  by  about  thirty  members,  emi¬ 
grated  to  New  England,  settling  in  Scituate  and  sub¬ 
sequently  in  Barnstable.  This  leaven  of  Anabaptism 
frequently  reappears  in  the  ecclesiastical  history  of 
New  England. 

The  reasons  for  this  extreme  hostility  of  the  Bay 
Colony  to  the  Baptists  are  probably  threefold. 

In  the  first  place,  as  I  have  already  suggested,  the 
Baptists  were  identified  in  the  public  thought  with 
the  Munster  fanatics.  The  term  Anabaptist  came 
to  have  much  the  same  connotation  we  now  attach  to 
the  label  anarchist.  It  was  a  general  term  of  oppro¬ 
brium.  It  is  now  clearly  established  that  some  at 
least  of  the  Munster  party,  so  far  from  being  in  any 
true  sense  Baptists,  came  to  practise  infant  baptism. 
But  the  German  and  Swiss  reformers  took  little 
pains  to  examine  or  treat  fairly  the  men  who  carried 
their  own  principles  further  than  they  desired. 

In  the  second  place,  the  denial  of  infant  baptism 
undoubtedly  involved  a  most  insidious  and  effective 
attack  upon  the  Massachusetts  theocracy.  Rev. 
Thomas  Cobbet,  minister  in  Lynn  and  afterward  in 
Ipswich,  in  a  letter  to  Increase  Mather,  states  this 
clearly.  He  says:3 

And  I  add  theyr  very  principle  of  makeing  infant  Bap¬ 
tisms  a  nullity,  it  doth  make  at  once  all  our  churches,  &  our 
religious  Civill  state  and  polity,  and  all  the  officers  &  mem¬ 
bers  thereof  to  be  unbaptized  &  to  bee  no  Christians  &  so 

3  Mass.  Hist.  Coll.,  Vol.  XXXVIII.  p.  291. 


59 


The  Baptists  in  the  United  States 


our  churches  to  bee  no  churches;  &  so  we  have  no  regular 
power  to  choose  Deputies  for  any  General  Court,  nor  to 
choose  any  Magistrates. 

A  third  reason  for  this  hostility  to  the  Baptists 
was  that  the  idea  that  a  sound  body  politic  could  pos¬ 
sibly  be  built  on  the  principle  of  religious  liberty  was 
totally  inconceivable  to  the  Bay  Colony  people.  The 
Half-way  Covenant  was  the  utmost  concession  that 
could  be  made,  and  that  almost  rent  apart  the  the¬ 
ocracy.  Furthermore,  some  of  the  earlier  experi¬ 
ences  of  the  Providence  Plantations  with  fanatics 
and  disturbers  were  not  such  as  to  commend  the 
religious  liberty  for  which  the  Baptists  stood. 

The  hostility  to  the  Baptists  soon  had  three  con¬ 
crete  manifestations  in  the  Bay  Colony.  The  first 
was  the  whipping  of  Obadiah  Holmes. 

In  July,  1651,  the  Massachusetts  authorities 
learned  that  Clarke  and  Holmes  and  Crandall  from 
Newport  were  on  a  visit  to  a  fellow  Baptist  in  Lynn, 
William  Witter.  It  appears  that  while  the  visitors 
were  holding  a  service  in  Witter’s  house  they  were 
arrested  and  subsequently  removed  to  Boston. 
Clarke  and  Crandall  escaped  with  heavy  fines,  but 
Holmes  was  imprisoned  until  September,  when  he 
was  publicly  flogged  on  his  bare  back.  “  It  was 
grievous,  as  the  spectators  said,  the  man  striking 
with  all  his  strength  with  a  three-corded  whip,  yea, 
spitting  on  his  hands  three  times.” 

A  second  specific  act  of  hostility  was  the  deposi¬ 
tion  of  the  first  President  of  Harvard  College,  Henry 
Dunster,  because  he  espoused  Baptist  views. 


60 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


Henry  Dunster  was  matriculated  at  Magdalen 
College,  Cambridge.  It  is  worthy  of  note  that  John 
Harvard  at  Emmanuel  College  was  for  two  years  a 
fellow  student  at  Cambridge  with  Dunster.  Cotton 
Mather  speaks  of  Dunster  as  having  exercised  his 
ministry  in  England.  Dunster  arrived  in  Boston 
toward  the  latter  end  of  the  summer  of  1640,  at  the 
age  of  twenty  or  twenty-one.  Soon  after  his  arrival 
he  purchased  a  property  in  Boston  at  the  northeast 
corner  of  Court  Street  and  Washington  Street — 
where  the  Ames  Building  now  stands — but  he  had 
scarcely  settled  in  his  new  home  before  he  was  called 
to  the  presidency  of  the  college  of  Cambridge. 
(August,  1640.)  “  Mr.  Henry  Dunster  is  now 

President  of  this  college/’  wrote  Captain  Johnson 
in  his  “  Wonder-Working  Providence,”  “  fitted  from 
the  Lord  for  the  work,  and  by  those  who  have  skill 
that  way,  reported  to  be  an  able  Proficient  in  both 
Hebrew,  Greek  and  Latin  languages,  an  Orthodox 
Preacher  of  the  truths  of  Christ,  very  powerful 
through  his  blessing  to  move  the  affections.” 

Harvard  was  only  a  school  when  Dunster  took 
charge.  He  is  usually  reckoned  as  its  first  president, 
since  the  man  who  had  had  charge  for  two  years  was 
dismissed  for  unworthy  conduct.  Dunster  served  as 
President  for  fourteen  years,  and  Quincy  says  of 
him : 

He  united  in  himself  the  character  of  both  patron  and 
President,  for  poor  as  he  was,  he  contributed  at  a  time 
of  its  utmost  need  one  hundred  acres  of  land  towards  its 
support;  besides  rendering  to  it,  for  a  succession  of  years, 


The  Baptists  in  the  United  States 


61 


a  series  of  official  services,  well-directed,  unwearied  and 
altogether  inestimable. 

President  Dunster  was  apparently  led  by  the 
treatment  accorded  Clarke  and  Crandall  and  Holmes 
to  examine  the  matter  of  baptism  for  himself.  He 
found,  as  he  says,  that  “  All  instituted  Gospel  wor¬ 
ship  hath  some  express  word  of  Scripture  but  Pedo- 
baptism  hath  none.”  In  October,  1654,  Dunster  was 
compelled  to  resign  the  presidency,  after  having 
been  indicted  by  the  Grand  Jury  for  “  disturbing  the 
ordinance  of  infant  baptism  in  the  Cambridge 
Church.”  Cotton  Mather  says,  “  His  unhappy  en¬ 
tanglement  in  the  snares  of  Anabaptism  filled  the 
overseers  with  uneasy  fears,  lest  the  students  by  his 
means  should  come  to  be  ensnared,”  Quincy,  in  his 
“  History  of  Harvard  College,”  says  of  Dunster,  “  No 
man  ever  questioned  his  talents,  learning,  exemplary 
fidelity,  and  usefulness.”  Dunster  removed  to  Scitu- 
ate  in  the  Plymouth  Colony,  where  he  became  the 
successor  to  Chauncey  and  Chauncey  became  his 
successor  at  Harvard.  He  died  February  27,  1659. 

A  third  illustration  of  intolerance  was  the  attitude 
of  the  theocracy  toward  the  organization  of  a  Bap¬ 
tist  church  in  Boston.  The  movement  began  in 
Charlestown  and  appears  to  have  had  the  sympathy 
of  President  Dunster.  The  story  of  the  fines  and 
imprisonments  decreed  upon  this  faithful  group  has 
often  been  told.  For  a  time  the  little  band  had  its 
home  in  Thomas  Gould’s  house  on  Noddle’s  Island  in 
the  harbor,  now  East  Boston,  but  in  1659,  some  of 
the  members  acquired  a  small  building,  then  on 


62 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


Salem  Street,  probably  with  a  view  of  having  it 
transferred  to  the  church.  The  church  bought  the 
house  and  the  land  on  which  it  stood  February  9, 
1670,  but  the  stir  which  this  action  aroused  led  the 
General  Court  to  enact  a  law  the  following  May  pro¬ 
hibiting  the  erection  and  use  of  a  house  of  public 
worship  without  the  consent  of  the  freemen  of  the 
town  and  license  of  the  County  Court,  or  special 
order  of  the  General  Court,  on  penalty  of  forfeiture 
of  house  and  land  to  the  county. 

The  Baptists  appear  not  to  have  attempted  to 
occupy  this  house  before  February,  1680.  It  seemed 
to  them  that  they  had  a  perfect  right  to  do  so,  not¬ 
withstanding  the  colonial  law,  for  Charles  II,  in  the 
interests  of  Episcopacy,  had  directed  the  colonial 
authorities  to  allow  all  Protestants  liberty  of  con¬ 
science.  The  Court,  however,  acting  upon  the  colo¬ 
nial  law,  ordered  the  marshal  to  nail  up  the  doors  of 
the  Baptist  meeting-house.  The  original  order  is 
preserved  in  the  First  Baptist  Church  of  Boston. 
The  royal  decree,  however,  proved  stronger  than 
the  colonial  law,  and  after  suffering  some  further 
annoyance  the  little  band  was  permitted  to  use  its 
property  for  worship. 

John  Russell,  who  became  the  second  pastor  of  the 
church  in  July,  1679,  following  Thomas  Gould  who 
died  October,  1675,  wrote  an  account  of  the  suffer¬ 
ings  of  the  Boston  Baptist  Church  which  was  printed 
in  England,  with  a  preface  signed  by  the  leading 
pastors  of  the  English  Calvinistic  Baptists.  But 
during  the  forty  years  that  had  elapsed  since  the 


The  Baptists  in  the  United  States 


63 


banishment  of  Roger  Williams  from  Massachusetts 
Bay  in  October,  1635,  great  things  had  happened  in 
England.  The  Long  Parliament,  the  Civil  War, 
the  Commonwealth,  the  execution  of  Charles  I,  the 
Protectorate  of  Cromwell,  and  the  restoration  of  the 
Stuarts,  had  followed  in  rapid  succession.  England 
had  been  successively  High  Church  Episcopalian 
under  Laud,  Presbyterian  under  the  Long  Parlia¬ 
ment  and  the  Solemn  League,  Independent  and  Bap¬ 
tist  under  Cromwell,  and  Episcopalian  again  under 
Charles  II.  The  Presbyterians  and  Independents 
and  Baptists  had  undergone  the  suffering  and 
humiliation  of  Saint  Bartholomew’s  Day,  1662,  when 
two  thousand  of  the  ablest  and  most  saintly  of  the 
English  pastors  had  been  deprived  at  a  stroke  of 
their  pulpits.  Whatever  the  English  Independents 
of  1635  might  have  held  in  regard  to  toleration,  in 
1680  they  were  broad-minded  and  charitable.  The 
English  Independents  had  moved  on  to  a  full  appre¬ 
ciation  and  acceptance  of  Roger  Williams’s  great 
doctrine;  the  New  England  Independents  “  stuck,” 
to  use  John  Robinson’s  phrase,  where  their  fathers 
had  left  them.  These  London  ministers  show  in  this 
preface  to  Russell’s  tract  their  amazement  that  those 
who  had  come  to  the  New  World  to  escape  persecu¬ 
tion  should  persecute  their  brethren.  “  For  one  Prot¬ 
estant  Congregation,”  they  say, 

to  persecute  another,  where  is  no  pretence  to  infallibility 
in  the  decision  of  all  controversies  seems  much  more  unrea¬ 
sonable  than  the  cruelties  of  the  Church  of  Rome  towards 
them  that  depart  from  their  superstitions. 


64 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


The  English  Independents  had  advanced  much 
further  toward  the  recognition  of  the  rights  of  con¬ 
science  than  their  Massachusetts  brethren.  The  Bay 
Colony  represented  a  type  of  thought  that  prevailed 
in  England  two  generations  before,  and  that  type 
had  been  perpetuated  in  New  England,  while  the 
Independents  of  Old  England  had  advanced  toward 
modern  ideas. 

There  were  at  least  two  incidents  that  contributed 
toward  a  different  attitude  of  the  Standing  Order  as 
to  the  Baptists  at  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  cen¬ 
tury.  William  Turner,  who  was  one  of  the  group  of 
Charlestown  Baptists  that  organized  the  church  on 
Noodle’s  Island,  greatly  distinguished  himself  in 
defense  of  the  Colony.  In  1670  Turner  was  in 
prison,  though  Allen  and  Oxenbridge  of  the  First 
Church  and  all  the  deputies  in  the  Legislature  voted 
for  his  release,  but  the  magistrates  in  the  Governor’s 
Council  were  set  against  it.  “  Above  thirty  weeks,” 
he  says,  “  I  have  been  lying  in  prison,  to  the  possible 
ruin  of  my  headless  family.  I  am  ready  to  serve 
this  country  to  the  utmost  of  my  ability,  in  all  civil 
things.  In  faith  and  order  God  alone  can  satisfy  a 
poor  soul.”  In  the  year  1675,  when  King  Philip 
launched  his  conspiracy  against  the  English  settlers, 
Turner,  mindful  of  the  promise  he  had  made  in 
prison  five  years  before,  to  serve  the  country,  offered 
to  the  magistrates  to  raise  a  company  among  his 
friends  and  acquaintances  to  fight  the  Indians.  At 
first  Turner’s  offer  was  refused,  but  the  next  year 
when  the  fortunes  of  the  war  were  turning  against 


65 


The  Baptists  in  the  United  States 


the  settlers,  and  the  flames  of  burning  buildings 
filled  the  sky  from  Casco  Bay  to  Stonington,  the 
magistrates  came  to  Turner,  begging  him  to  renew 
his  offer  and  raise  his  company.  Turner  recruited 
his  company  mainly  from  the  members  and  adher¬ 
ents  of  the  First  Baptist  Church.  The  officers  were 
members  of  the  church.  Elder  Drinker  was  lieuten¬ 
ant,  Philip  Squire  sergeant,  and  Thomas  Skinner 
clerk.  There  are  thirteen  names  in  the  list  of  the 
Company  he  sent  to  Boston  which  correspond  to  the 
names  of  the  members  of  the  First  Baptist  Church, 
and  there  are  twice  as  many  more  in  this  list  of 
men  whose  mothers,  wives,  or  sisters  belonged  to 
the  Baptist  Church. 

On  February  21,  1676,  Captain  Turner  began  his 
march  to  Northampton.  King  Philip’s  headquarters 
were  at  Northfield,  and  he  had  another  camp  at  the 
Falls  of  the  Connecticut,  which  bear  today  the  name 
of  the  doughty  Baptist  captain,  Turner’s  Falls.  The 
surprise  that  Captain  Turner  sprang  at  this  point  is 
a  notable  episode  in  New  England  history  and  even 
Increase  Mather  was  enthusiastic  in  his  recognition 
of  the  brave  exploit. 

A  second  incident  that  contributed  to  the  good 
feeling  between  the  Boston  Baptists  and  their  Con¬ 
gregational  brethren  was  the  attitude  of  the  Mathers 
toward  the  Baptists  at  the  ordination  of  Rev.  Elisha 
Callender  as  pastor  of  the  Baptist  Church.  At  this 
service  the  right  hand  of  fellowship  was  given  by  the 
aged  Increase  Mather,  and  his  son  Cotton  Mather 
preached  the  ordination  sermon.  The  appreciation 


66 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


of  this  courtesy  of  the  Mathers  on  the  part  of 
Thomas  Hollis,  a  wealthy  London  Baptist,  led  him 
to  direct  his  benevolence  to  Harvard  College.  The 
Hollis  family  contributed  the  largest  amount  to  the 
funds  of  Harvard  College — about  six  thousand 
pounds — that  it  received  from  any  one  family  until 
well  along  in  the  nineteenth  century.  We  must 
remember  that  money  then  was  worth  about  five 
times  its  value  today. 

Possibly  the  Half-way  Covenant  has  sometimes 
been  overemphasized  as  a  principal  cause  of  the  Uni¬ 
tarian  separation.  The  First  Church  of  Boston, 
which  strenuously  opposed  the  covenant  and  called 
John  Davenport  from  New  Haven  to  become  its  pas¬ 
tor  in  order  that  that  valiant  defender  of  orthodoxy 
might  lead  in  Boston  against  the  weaker  brethren, 
ultimately  became  Unitarian,  while  the  Third 
Church,  the  Old  South,  which  was  organized  in  sup¬ 
port  of  the  Half-way  Covenant,  was  the  only  one  of 
the  Boston  Congregational  churches  that  did  not 
become  Unitarian. 

The  discussions,  however,  that  centered  about  the 
covenant  inevitably  had  one  effect.  They  called 
fresh  attention  to  the  reasonableness  and  scriptural¬ 
ness  of  the  Baptist  position,  that  if  baptism  had  any 
such  close  relation  to  church-membership  as  all  par¬ 
ties  believed  it  had,  only  those  who  gave  some  evi¬ 
dence  of  possessing  the  Christian  character  should 
be  baptized.  The  circumstance,  however,  that  the 
position  of  the  conservatives  endorsed  the  essential 
correctness  of  the  Baptists,  did  not  make  the  Bap- 


The  Baptists  in  the  United  States 


67 


tists  any  more  tolerable  to  some  of  the  standing 
order.  Still,  in  almost  every  community  there  were 
some  who,  however  much  they  might  dislike  the 
Baptists,  were  broad-minded  and  fair-minded 
enough  to  see  that  the  acknowledged  evils  of  the 
Half-way  Covenant  were  a  lurid  commentary  on  the 
peril  of  departing  from  the  principle  that  the  true 
basis  of  church-membership  must  be  found  in  per¬ 
sonal  Christian  experience. 

The  most  important  single  factor  in  promoting  the 
growth  of  the  denomination  was  the  Great  Awaken¬ 
ing  itself.  In  1740,  the  third  generation  of  the  set¬ 
tlement  of  New  England,  the  religious  impulse  that 
a  century  before  had  created  the  theocracy  of  Mas¬ 
sachusetts  Bay  Colony,  had  nearly  died  out.  The 
situation  of  the  Baptist  cause  for  years  was  about  as 
follows:  The  second  Baptist  Church  in  Boston,  now 
the  Warren  Avenue  Church,  was  not  formed  until 
1743,  as  the  result  of  the  opposition  of  Rev.  Jeremy 
Condy,  pastor  of  the  First  Church,  to  the  Great 
Awakening,  as  the  Edwards-Whitefield  Revival 
came  to  be  known.  The  Baptist  Church  at  Kittery, 
Maine,  organized  in  1682,  was  broken  up  by  fines 
and  imprisonment,  and  some  of  its  prominent  mem¬ 
bers,  emigrating  to  South  Carolina,  gathered  what 
is  now  the  First  Church  of  Charleston,  the  only  Bap¬ 
tist  church  founded  in  the  Southern  colonies  in  the 
seventeenth  century.  In  1765,  Rev.  Hezekiah  Smith, 
a  graduate  of  Princeton,  founded  the  First  Church, 
Haverhill,  the  oldest  Baptist  church  north  of  Boston. 

The  immediate  result  of  the  Great  Awakening  was 


68 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


to  run  a  line  of  division  through  New  England  Con- 
gregationalists,  separating  the  formal  adherents  of 
the  churches  from  those  in  whose  lives  religion  was 
a  vital  experience.  The  majority  of  the  Congrega¬ 
tional  ministers  and  churches  opposed  the  revival, 
and  it  must  be  said  in  fairness  that  the  eccentricities 
and  fanaticism  that  developed  in  certain  places  gave 
some  warrant  for  the  antagonism.  On  the  other 
hand,  we  can  but  feel,  as  we  read  the  records  and 
journals  of  the  period,  that  a  substantial  reason  for 
the  opposition  was  the  very  formality  and  spiritual 
deadness  into  which  many  of  the  churches  and  mem¬ 
bers  had  sunk.  The  Baptist  churches  also  shared  in 
this  religious  declension,  but  their  insistence  on  a 
regenerate  membership  had  prevented  their  reap¬ 
ing  the  harvest  of  evil  that  the  Congregational 
churches  had  gathered  from  the  Half-way  Covenant. 
The  Baptists  at  first  do  not  seem  to  have  been  enthu¬ 
siastic  about  the  religious  movement,  but  gradually 
they  came  into  a  warmer  sympathy  with  it.  The 
Congregational  churches  that  supported  the  revival 
came  to  be  known  as  New  Lights.  And  between  the 
New  Light  Congregational  and  the  Baptist  churches 
there  rapidly  developed  sympathies  and  affinities 
which  led  to  some  of  the  most  interesting  develop¬ 
ments  of  the  century. 

In  some  cases  the  New  Light  members  of  Congre¬ 
gational  churches  sought  membership  in  Baptist 
churches.  In  other  instances  they  formed  New 
Light  congregations  alongside  the  old  Congrega¬ 
tional  churches. 


The  Baptists  in  the  United  States 


69 


The  religious  history  of  Middleborough,  Massa¬ 
chusetts,  is  typical.  Here  Isaac  Backus  became  pas¬ 
tor  of  the  New  Light  Congregational  church.  But 
soon  various  questions  asserted  themselves.  What 
was  the  Scriptural  authority  for  infant  baptism? 
What  is  the  status  of  the  baptized  child  in  relation 
to  the  church?  What  is  the  standing  in  the  church 
of  those  who,  though  they  were  baptized  in  infancy, 
unmistakably  are  not  living  a  Christian  life?  Such 
questions  greatly  troubled  Mr.  Backus.  At  one  time 
he  preached  a  sermon  repudiating  infant  baptism 
and  advocating  immersion.  A  few  days  later  he 
withdrew  from  these  positions,  but  ultimately,  after 
two  years  during  which  he  was  “  much  tossed  in  his 
mind,”  he  became  a  convinced  advocate  of  the  Bap¬ 
tist  principles.  The  course  of  Mr.  Backus  made  a 
serious  division  in  the  church,  and  five  councils 
reviewed  the  situation.  At  length  Mr.  Backus 
became  the  founder  of  the  First  Baptist  Church  in 
Middleborough,  of  which  he  was  pastor  for  fifty 
years. 

Backus,  though  a  man  of  excellent  parts,  had  not 
enjoyed  a  college  training,  but  he  so  improved  his 
opportunities  for  general  culture  that  his  “  History 
of  the  Baptists,”  originally  published  in  three  consid¬ 
erable  volumes,  is  one  of  the  standard  works  for  the 
religious  history  of  New  England  in  the  seventeenth 
century,  and  George  Bancroft  characterizes  Backus 
as  “  one  of  the  most  exact  of  our  New  England  his¬ 
torians  ”  and  his  work  as  “  marked  by  ingenuous¬ 
ness,  clear  discernment,  and  determined  accuracy.” 


70 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


In  other  towns  there  was  no  such  discussion  as  at 
Middleborough.  The  New  Light  congregation  at 
once  or  gradually  became  a  Baptist  church. 

I  have  noticed  that  the  emigration  of  prominent 
members  of  the  Kittery,  Maine,  Church  to  South 
Carolina  led  to  the  organization  of  a  Baptist  church 
in  Charleston  in  1682.  William  Screven  was  the 
leader  of  that  group,  and  his  name  should  always  be 
held  in  affectionate  remembrance  by  Southern  Bap¬ 
tists.  He  served  as  pastor  till  1706,  when  he  retired 
to  Georgetown  at  the  age  of  77.  But  even  the  fact 
that  he  was  an  old  man  did  not  prevent  his  receiving 
a  call  to  the  First  Church,  Boston.  This,  however, 
he  declined,  and  returned  to  Charleston,  where  he 
served  as  pastor  until  his  death  in  1716.  Charleston 
is  the  mother  church  of  Southern  Baptists,  and  from 
it  Baptist  influences  have  been  propagated  in  widen- 
ing  circles.  As  Screven  went  to  South  Carolina 
from  Maine,  Shubael  Stearns  went  from  Boston  and 
his  brother-in-law  Daniel  Marshall  from  Connecticut 
to  Virginia.  Their  preaching  was  thoroughly  evan¬ 
gelistic  and  many  were  converted. 

But  this  impulse  that  came  from  New  England 
was  not  so  strong  as  the  one  which  had  its  center  in 
Philadelphia.  In  some  respects  Philadelphia  is  the 
mother  city  of  American  Baptists.  In  Boston  the 
Baptist  cause  was  under  constant  persecution  and 
suspicion.  The  ruling  order  in  Massachusetts  was 
very  reluctant  to  part  with  any  of  its  privileges. 
The  closest  parallel  to  the  Massachusetts  situation  is 
found  two  generations  later  in  Virginia,  where  the 


. 


The  Baptists  in  the  United  States 


71 


relation  of  the  Episcopalians  to  the  Baptists  was 
like  that  of  the  New  England  Congregationalists  to 
all  who  did  not  accept  their  rule.  Perhaps  this 
accounts  for  the  peculiar  vigor  of  Massachusetts  and 
Virginia  Baptists,  as  a  tree  is  more  firmly  rooted 
when  in  an  exposed  position  it  has  to  contend  with 
the  elements. 

The  liberal  offers  of  complete  religious  liberty  in 
New  Jersey  and  Pennsylvania  drew  Baptists  to  this 
region  as  early  as  1660.  The  church  at  Middletown, 
N.  J.,  dates  from  1688,  Piscataway  *89,  Cohansy  ’90. 
This  group  of  New  Jersey  churches  which  in  1795 
numbered  85  with  2,177  members,  was  served  by  as 
able  a  company  of  ministers  as  we  have  ever  had. 
Among  them  were  Abel  Morgan,  John  Gano,  Heze- 
kiah  Smith,  and  James  Manning.  Smith  and  Man¬ 
ning  were  graduates  of  Princeton,  and  from  the 
vision  of  these  two  men  was  to  come  the  most  power¬ 
ful  influence  for  an  educated  ministry. 

In  Pennsylvania  there  was  about  the  same  num¬ 
ber  of  churches  with  half  the  membership.  Nat¬ 
urally  these  churches  in  these  two  States  were  drawn 
closely  together,  and  the  result  was  the  organization 
in  1707  of  the  Philadelphia  Association.  At  first  the 
meetings  were  for  religious  exercises  only,  but  they 
naturally  drifted  into  the  consideration  of  other 
matters  of  common  interest.  Many  of  the  brethren 
were  very  jealous  of  such  an  organization.  They 
feared  that  it  might  trench  on  the  independence  of 
the  churches,  and  come  in  time  to  exercise  author¬ 
ity  after  the  order  of  presbyteries.  When  the  War- 


72 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


ren  Association  was  organized,  bringing  together 
the  New  England  Baptists  in  a  cooperation  like  that 
of  Philadelphia  it  was  stipulated  that  the  union 
was  “  consistent  with  independency  and  power  of 
particular  churches,  because  it  pretended  to  be  no 
other  than  an  advisory  council,  utterly  disclaiming 
superiority,  jurisdiction  and  coercive  right  and 
infallibility.” 

It  is  impossible  to  exaggerate  the  influence  of  the 
Philadelphia  Association  upon  the  South.  What  had 
been  done  in  a  previous  generation  by  New  England 
ministers  and  by  small  groups  of  Baptists  that  had 
emigrated  from  England  or  Ireland  was  slight  com¬ 
pared  with  the  flaming  evangel  of  the  men  from 
the  Philadelphia  Association  who  both  preceded  and 
followed  up  the  powerful  appeals  of  George  White- 
field.  And  no  man  left  a  deeper  mark  upon  evan¬ 
gelical  religion  in  America  than  Whitefield. 

A  new  period  in  the  religious  history  of  the 
United  States  begins  after  the  close  of  the  Revo¬ 
lutionary  War.  The  result  of  war,  no  matter  how 
legitimate  and  holy  the  cause  in  which  it  is  waged, 
is  always  to  lower  the  moral  tone  of  the  nation  and 
draw  it  away  from  religion.  But  the  second  decade 
after  the  close  of  the  war  witnessed  a  remarkable 
expansion.  In  1740  there  were  but  21  Baptist 
churches  in  all  New  England,  eleven  of  them  in 
Rhode  Island.  In  1768  there  were  69  churches,  but 
in  1790  there  were  286  'with  a  membership  of  more 
than  17,000.  There  is  no  such  record  of  rapid 
growth  on  the  part  of  any  denomination  in  the 


The  Baptists  in  the  United  States 


73 


entire  history  of  New  England.  A  similar  experi¬ 
ence  was  shared  by  the  South  and  West.  The  Bap¬ 
tists  from  the  Carolinas  and  Virginia  evangelized 
Tennessee  and  Kentucky.  In  the  former  by  1790 
there  were  18  churches  and  889  members,  and  in 
the  latter  42  churches  and  3,095  members. 

The  Baptists  were  the  first  to  enter  Ohio,  and 
the  church  at  Columbia  organized  in  1790  by 
Stephen  Gano  has  the  distinction  of  being  the  first 
Protestant  church  “  in  all  the  territory  North  and 
West  of  the  Ohio  River; ”  The  Miami  Association 
dates  from  1797.  Illinois  was  evangelized  from 
Virginia,  and  the  church  at  New  Design,  St.  Clair 
County,  dates  from  1796. 

Professor  Vedder  has  well  said  :4 

It  is  impossible  to  estimate  too  highly  the  services  of  these 
men  of  faith  and  works.  If  they  did  not  wander  “  in  sheep¬ 
skins  and  goatskins,”  like  ancient  heroes  of  faith,  they  wore 
deerskins.  Living  in  the  plainest  manner,  sharing  all  the 
hardships  of  a  pioneer  people,  making  hazardous  journeys,  in 
danger  from  floods,  from  wild  beasts,  and  from  fiercer 
Indians,  the  circuit  preacher  labored  in  a  parish  that,  as  one 
of  them  said,  “  took  in  one  half  of  creation,  for  it  had  no 
boundary  on  the  W est.”  The  preaching  was  of  the  rough 
and  ready  order,  suited  to  the  people  addressed;  the  preacher 
being  hardly  more  literate  than  his  hearers,  who  were  fortu¬ 
nate  if  they  could  read  their  Bibles  and  write  their  names. 
Yet,  these  men,  uncouth  as  they  would  now  seem,  led  multi¬ 
tudes  to  Christ,  built  up  churches  and  laid  denominational 
foundations,  deep  and  broad.  We  who  have  entered  into  their 
labors  do  well  to  honor  men  whose  shoes  we  are  not  worthy  to 
unloose. 

4  Short  History,  p.  168. 

F 


74 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


1.  There  were  three  outstanding  events  in  the 
development  of  the  denomination  after  the  Great 
Awakening:  the  gradual  achievement  of  religious 
liberty,  the  new  interest  in  education,  and  the  devel¬ 
opment  of  the  missionary  impulse  both  at  home  and 
abroad.  Looking  back  the  comparatively  short  dis¬ 
tance  of  less  than  a  century,  it  is  almost  inconceivable 
that  Massachusetts  should  have  fallen  so  far  behind 
the  general  movement  of  the  age  and  have  been  so 
reluctant  to  come  to  an  act  of  common  justice.  The 
innate  conservatism  and  sense  of  privilege  of  a 
standing  order,  old  prejudices,  and  sometimes,  it  is 
to  be  feared,  the  bitter  spirit  in  which  rights  were 
asserted,  all  operated  to  keep  Massachusetts  far  in 
the  rear  of  other  States.  President  Eliot  composed 
for  one  of  the  inscriptions  for  the  World’s  Fair  at 
Chicago  in  1893,  this  sentence :  Toleration  in  religion 
the  best  fruit  of  the  last  four  centuries .  If  this  is 
a  true  judgment,  Massachusetts  was  slow,  very  slow, 
in  appreciating  it.  At  length,  in  1833,  after  coming 
before  the  Legislature  at  several  sessions,  an  amend¬ 
ment  forever  separating  Church  and  State  in  Mas¬ 
sachusetts  was  ratified  by  the  people.  And  the  long 
struggle  in  which  Baptists  had  been  the  most  prom¬ 
inent  was  closed  with  a  triumph. 

2.  The  second  event  that  contributed  to  the 
strength  of  the  Baptists  was  the  new  interest  in 
education. 

In  the  first  hundred  years  of  American  history 
three  colleges  had  been  founded — Harvard  in 
1636,  William  and  Mary  in  1693,  and  Yale  in  1701. 


The  Baptists  in  the  United  States 


75 


During  the  next  four  decades  twelve  colleges  were 
established.  The  first  four  were  as  follows:  the 
College  of  New  Jersey  (now  Princeton)  in  1746; 
King’s  College  (now  Columbia  University)  in  1754; 
the  University  of  Pennsylvania  in  1755,  and  Brown 
University  in  1764. 

Harvard  and  Yale  were  controlled  by  the  Congre- 
gationalists,  the  College  of  New  Jersey  by  the  Pres¬ 
byterians,  the  University  of  Pennsylvania,  King’s 
College,  and  William  and  Mary  by  the  Episcopalians. 

The  reasons  that  led  the  Baptists  to  found  a  col¬ 
lege  at  Providence  have  been  variously  stated.  Some 
of  them  will  not  bear  examination.  For  example, 
it  has  often  been  asserted  that  the  religious  tests  at 
the  existing  colleges  put  Baptist  students  under 
peculiar  disabilities.  But  there  is  nothing  in  the  char¬ 
ters  of  Harvard,  Yale,  King’s  College,  or  the  Uni¬ 
versity  of  Pennsylvania  to  bar  Baptist  students, 
while  at  Harvard  some  of  the  Hollis  scholarships 
were  by  preference  given  to  Baptists. 

But,  however  liberal  the  college  charters,  there 
can  be  no  doubt  that  there  was  considerable  social 
discrimination  against  Baptist  students.  They  did 
not  belong  to  the  ruling  caste,  and  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  the  college  students  of  the  day,  reflect¬ 
ing  the  disposition  of  the  Congregational  churches 
toward  the  Baptists,  made  the  lot  of  Baptist  stu¬ 
dents  uncomfortable.  The  potent  reason,  however, 
that  led  the  Baptists  to  found  a  college  was  the  rapid 
growth  of  the  denomination  after  the  Great  Awaken¬ 
ing  of  1740,  and  the  appreciation  on  the  part  of  the 


76 


7  he  Baptist  Heritage 


leading  men  of  the  great  need  of  education  among 
the  rank  and  file  of  the  churches. 

Harvard  inscribes  on  one  of  her  gates  a  beauti¬ 
ful  sentence  from  a  contemporary  letter: 

After  God  had  carried  us  safely  to  New  England,  and  wee 
had  builded  our  houses,  provided  necessaries  for  our  liveli¬ 
hood,  rear’d  convenient  places  for  God’s  worship,  and  settled 
the  Civill  Government;  One  of  the  next  things  we  looked  for 
was  to  advance  Learning,  and  perpetuate  it  to  Posterity; 
dreading  to  leave  an  illiterate  ministry  to  our  churches,  when 
our  present  Ministers  shall  lie  in  the  Dust. 

The  devotion  and  the  vision  that  founded  Har¬ 
vard  in  1638,  founded  Brown,  one  hundred  and 
twenty-six  years  later,  in  1764.  The  College  did  not 
originate  in  Rhode  Island,  but  in  that  other  center 
of  Baptist  influence,  the  Philadelphia  Association. 
In  1756  the  Association  had  established  an  academy 
at  Hopewell,  New  Jersey,  under  the  care  of  Rev. 
Isaac  Eaton.  In  the  papers  of  David  Howell,  the 
first  professor  in  Brown  University,  there  is  this 
memorandum : 

Many  of  the  churches  being  supplied  with  able  pastors  from 
Mr.  Eaton’s  academy  and  thus  being  convinced  by  experience 
of  the  great  usefulness  of  human  literature  to  more  thor¬ 
oughly  furnish  the  Man  of  God  for  the  most  important  work 
of  the  Gospel  ministry,  the  hands  of  the  Philadelphia  Asso¬ 
ciation  were  strengthened  and  their  hearts  encouraged  to  ex¬ 
tend  the  design  of  promoting  literature  in  the  Society  by 
erecting  on  some  suitable  part  of  the  continent  a  College  or 
University  which  should  be  principally  under  the  direction  of 
the  Baptists. 


The  Baptists  in  the  United  States 


77 


It  is  evident  that  the  purposes  of  the  founding  of 
Harvard  and  Brown  were  similar,  but  the  charter 
of  Brown  discloses  a  conception  in  the  minds  of  the 
founders  of  the  relation  of  education  to  the  welfare 
of  the  whole  community  that  could  only  have  been 
inspired  by  a  large  outlook  upon  the  function  of 
education.  The  preamble  to  the  charter  gives  this 
reason  for  the  establishment  of  the  college: 

Institutions  for  liberal  Education  are  highly  beneficial  to 
Society,  by  forming  the  rising  generation  to  virtue,  knowl¬ 
edge  and  useful  literature;  and  thus  preserving  in  the  com¬ 
munity  a  succession  of  men  duly  qualified  for  discharging  the 
Offices  of  life  with  usefulness  and  reputation. 

A  letter  written  by  Isaac  Backus  to  an  English 
friend  the  year  after  the  college  was  founded  shows 
how  the  leaders  looked  at  this  enterprise.  He 
wrote : 

One  grand  objection  made  use  of  against  Believer’s  Bap¬ 
tism  has  been  that  none  but  ignorant  and  illiterate  men  have 
embraced  the  Baptist  sentiments.  And  there  was  so  much 
color  for  it  as  this,  namely,  that  ten  years  ago  there  were  but 
two  Baptist  ministers  in  all  New  England  who  had  what  is 
called  a  liberal  education ;  and  they  were  not  clear  in  the  doc¬ 
trines  of  grace. 

I  need  not  recount  the  various  steps  by  which  the 
New  Jersey  Academy  became  Brown  University. 
The  leaders  were  James  Manning,  the  first  presi¬ 
dent  of  the  college,  a  graduate  of  Princeton;  Mor¬ 
gan  Edwards,  a  graduate  of  Bristol  College,  En¬ 
gland  ;  and  Hezekiah  Smith,  a  graduate  of  Princeton  ; 


78 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


with  Isaac  Backus.  This  was  the  quartette  that  car¬ 
ried  the  great  enterprise  through  to  completion. 

In  1815,  the  Maine  Literary  and  Theological 
Institution,  now  Colby  College,  was  established  at 
Waterville,  Maine.  In  1825,  the  Newton  Theological 
Institution  was  founded  at  Newton  Centre.  Brown, 
Colby,  and  Newton  have  been  the  principal  agencies 
of  New  England  Baptists  for  higher  education. 
Brown  has  sent  out  six  thousand  nine  hundred  and 
eleven  men ;  Colby,  about  one  thousand  five  hundred ; 
and  the  Newton  Seminary,  one  thousand  six  hundred 
and  seventy-five. 

Professor  Brastow  of  Yale  in  his  work,  “  The  Mod¬ 
ern  Pulpit,”  probably  did  not  overstate  the  case  when 
he  gave  these  institutions  the  principal  credit  for 
raising  the  educational  equipment  of  the  American 
Baptist  ministry.  In  addition  to  the  two  colleges 
and  the  seminary  the  Baptists  have  well-equipped 
academies  in  all  the  New  England  States  except 
Rhode  Island,  and  in  Maine  four  academies  act  as 
the  principal  feeders  of  Colby  College. 

But  the  founding  of  Brown  University  was  not 
wholly  a  New  England  enterprise.  The  whole  coun¬ 
try  was  interested  in  it,  contributions  came  from 
Georgia,  the  Carolinas,  and  Virginia,  and  before 
the  Civil  War  many  of  the  Southern  Baptist  leaders 
were  educated  at  Brown  and  Newton. 

Taking  the  country  as  a  whole  Baptists  were 
indifferent  to  education,  and  in  most  cases  to  spe¬ 
cific  training  for  the  ministry,  even  when  they  appre¬ 
ciated  literary  culture.  Many  held  that  the  gospel 


The  Baptists  in  the  United  States 


79 


needed  no  aid  from  human  learning,  and  that  the 
educated  minister  would  tend  to  rely  upon  his  own 
resources  rather  than  upon  the  Holy  Spirit.  This  at¬ 
titude,  as  Doctor  Riley  has  shown  in  his  “  History  of 
the  Southern  Baptists,”  assumed  almost  incredible 
bitterness.  But  this  opposition  was  not  by  any 
means  confined  to  the  South.  It  still  abides  in  New 
England,  and  Newton,  the  first  school  founded  by 
American  Baptists  exclusively  for  theological  train¬ 
ing,  has  met  this  throughout  the  century  of  its  exis¬ 
tence.  But  there  were  prophets  and  leaders  in 
those  days,  and  the  names  of  Richard  Furman, 
Jesse  Mercer,  Henry  P.  Ripley,  Josiah  Penfield,  W. 
M.  Wingate,  James  B.  Taylor  are  known  and  hon¬ 
ored  in  every  Southern  Baptist  household. 

The  story  of  the  founding  of  the  theological  sem¬ 
inary,  now  known  as  the  Southern,  at  Louisville, 
Kentucky,  is  a  record  of  heroic  self-sacrifice  on  the 
part  of  as  noble  a  group  of  men  as  this  country  has 
produced.  James  P.  Boyce,  John  A.  Broadus,  Wil¬ 
liam  Williams,  and  Basil  Manley,  Jr.,  are  inspiring 
names  to  all  Baptists. 

3.  A  third  factor  of  great  importance  in  the  life 
of  the  denomination  was  the  development  of  the  mis¬ 
sionary  impulse  in  work  both  at  home  and  abroad. 
In  this  history  the  one  name  of  Adoniram  Judson 
stands  forth  preeminent.  Judson  graduated  from 
Brown  University  in  the  Class  of  1807,  and  from 
Andover  Theological  Seminary  in  1810. 

In  1812,  Judson,  with  three  other  young  mis¬ 
sionaries,  was  sent  to  the  Far  East  by  the  American 


80 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


Board  of  Commissioners  for  Foreign  Missions, 
which  had  been  recently  organized.  On  the  long 
journey  he  busied  himself  in  a  study  of  the  Scrip¬ 
tures  relating  to  baptism,  for  he  knew  that  he 
should  meet  in  India  the  English  Baptists.  As  a 
result  of  his  study  he  became  convinced  that  the 
Baptists  were  right  in  their  view  of  the  ordinance, 
and  he  was  baptized  in  Calcutta,  September  6,  1812. 
Soon  after  his  companion,  Luther  Rice,  followed 
his  example.  When  Judson’s  letters  to  Rev.  Dr. 
Thomas  Baldwin  of  Boston  and  to  Rev.  Dr.  Lucius 
Bolles  of  Salem,  announcing  his  change  of  view  and 
appealing  to  the  American  Baptists  for  help,  were 
published,  Baptists  recognized  the  appeal  as  a  divine 
call,  and  May  18,  1814,  eleven  States  and  the  Dis¬ 
trict  of  Columbia  sent  delegates  to  a  meeting  in 
Philadelphia.  The  result  was  the  organization  of 
“  The  General  Missionary  Convention  of  the  Baptist 
Denomination  in  the  United  States  for  Foreign  Mis- 
sions.,,  This  is  the  first  considerable  work  in  which 
American  Baptists  were  united. 

In  a  certain  sense  the  rapid  increase  of  Baptist 
churches  after  the  Great  Awakening  was  the  first 
factor  in  creating  a  denominational  consciousness, 
and  from  that  had  come  Brown  University,  but  it 
was  the  missionary  enterprise  inaugurated  in  these 
circumstances,  and  led  by  a  man  like  Judson,  of  rare 
scholarship,  of  apostolic  devotion,  and  of  a  fiber 
to  sustain  sufferings  that  rank  with  those  of  the 
early  martyrs,  which  transformed  a  group  of 
churches  that  were  as  a  lump  of  clay,  incapable  of 


The  Baptists  in  the  United  States 


81 


transmitting  a  vibration  from  particle  to  particle, 
into  a  block  of  marble  responsive  throughout  its 
entire  mass  to  every  impulse. 

The  record  of  what  was  at  first  accomplished 
appears  meager  in  the  light  of  our  larger  under¬ 
takings  of  recent  years.  It  is  reported  that  the 
contributions  of  the  first  year  were  one  thousand 
two  hundred  and  thirty-nine  dollars,  and  for  the 
first  ten  years  only  seventy-three  thousand  dollars. 
The  question  soon  arose  whether  work  among  the 
American  Indians  was  not  as  truly  foreign  as  work 
in  India  and  Burmah.  There  was  a  general  convic¬ 
tion  that  it  was,  and  the  impulse  from  JudsoiTs 
appeal  led  to  the  establishment  of  missions  among 
the  Indian  tribes.  In  1826,  when  we  had  nine  mis¬ 
sionaries  in  Burmah,  we  had  sixteen  among  the 
American  Indians. 

Undoubtedly  many  mistakes  were  made.  For 
one  thing,  too  much  was  attempted.  Judson  and 
Rice  profoundly  believed  in  an  educated  ministry. 
It  seemed  to  be  a  legitimate  thing  for  the  Missionary 
Society  to  found  a  university.  This  was  done  and 
Columbian  University  was  established  at  Washing¬ 
ton,  D.  C.  But  when  funds  that  were  needed  in 
Burma  were  used  in  Washington,  it  became  evident 
that  the  Society  must  bend  its  energies  to  one 
task.  Fortunately,  however,  it  was  out  of  their 
educational  interest  that  there  came  the  theological 
schools  in  Hamilton,  N.  Y.,  in  1819,  and  in  Newton 
in  1825.  The  Society,  however,  continued  the  work 
among  the  Indians. 


82 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


In  1826,  there  was  so  much  discouragement  about 
the  financial  outlook  of  the  Society  that  the  Bap¬ 
tists  of  Massachusetts  offered  to  become  responsi¬ 
ble  for  its  care  and  maintenance.  This  offer  was 
accepted,  and  the  headquarters  of  all  the  foreign 
missionary  work  of  the  Northern  Baptists  up  to  1918 
have  been  in  Boston.  Until  1845  the  Society  repre¬ 
sented  the  denomination  in  the  entire  country,  but  in 
that  year  “  The  Southern  Baptist  Convention  ”  was 
organized  with  headquarters  at  Richmond,  Va.  The 
division  was  wholly  on  the  issue  of  slavery. 

The  responsibility  assumed  by  the  Baptists  of 
Massachusetts  with  regard  to  this  work  has  proved 
larger,  perhaps,  than  our  fathers  imagined.  But 
the  Baptists  of  New  England  have  rallied  splendidly 
to  their  great  task,  and  they  have  amply  fulfilled 
that  venturous  pledge. 

The  headquarters  of  the  Society  were  removed 
in  1920  to  New  York,  the  financial  center  of  the 
country,  and  it  is  now  proposed  to  carry  them  to 
Chicago,  which  is  nearer  the  geographical  center  of 
the  country,  but  not  to  the  center  of  the  Baptist  con¬ 
stituency.  New  England  has  not  looked  unmoved  on 
this  transfer,  but  she  may  safely  challenge  either 
New  York  or  Chicago,  in  any  years  to  come,  to  do 
better  proportionately  than  Boston  has  done. 

It  is  impossible  to  overstate  what  the  interest  in 
foreign  missions  among  Baptists  that  dates  from 
the  appeal  of  Adoniram  Judson  and  Luther  Rice, 
has  done  for  the  Baptist  churches  of  the  United 
States.  Practically,  it  made  them  a  denomination. 


The  Baptists  in  the  United  States 


83 


It  enlisted  them  in  an  enterprise  that  interpreted 
to  them  anew  the  Christian  gospel :  it  broadened  the 
range  of  their  sympathies  and  interests  to  the  com¬ 
pass  of  the  globe,  and  it  created  a  new  sense  of  com¬ 
mon  brotherhood.  The  centennial  year  of  our  for¬ 
eign  missionary  work  was  observed  recently,  and  it 
was  noticeable  how  in  both  North  and  South  there 
was  a  common  recognition  of  the  fact  that  Judson’s 
appeal,  long  preceding  any  division  between  North 
and  South,  had  created  a  common  history  and  a  com¬ 
mon  consciousness  in  which  resided  the  fairest  hopes 
for  a  perfect  reunion  of  these  two  sections  of  our 
present  denominational  life. 

Previous  to  1882  there  had  been  sporadic  attempts 
to  evangelize  the  expanding  West,  but  the  move¬ 
ment  to  enlist  the  resources  of  the  entire  Baptist 
membership  of  the  States  of  the  Atlantic  Seaboard 
came  from  New  England.  Dr.  Jonathan  Going,  of 
Worcester,  and  Dr.  Lucius  Bolles,  of  Salem,  made  a 
tour  of  the  West  and  reported  that  the  time  was  ripe 
“  to  arouse  the  Baptist  community  throughout  the 
United  States  to  systematic  and  vigorous  efforts  in 
the  cause  of  domestic  missions  and  that  a  general 
home  mission  society  should  be  formed.”  The  result 
was  the  formation  of  The  American  Baptist  Home 
Mission  Society  in  1832,  with  headquarters  in  New 
York  City,  where  they  have  since  remained. 

North  and  South  during  the  last  twenty-five  years 
there  has  been  something  like  an  educational  revival 
throughout  the  whole  denomination,  and  large  sums 
have  been  given  to  our  institutions.  The  clearest- 


84 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


sighted  of  our  leaders  see  that  in  the  perpetuation 
and  enlargement  of  this  enthusiasm  lies,  from  a 
human  point  of  view,  the  fairest  prospect  of  contin¬ 
ued  denominational  efficiency  and  progress. 

The  union  of  the  Baptists  in  the  missionary  enter¬ 
prise  took  place  long  before  the  division  of  1845. 
After  the  Civil  War  a  prodigious  task  awaited  the 
Southern  Baptist  Convention,  and  the  way  it 
responded  to  the  challenge  elicits  the  admiration  of 
every  Christian  heart.  The  problems  of  organiza¬ 
tion,  of  evangelization,  of  education  were  prodigious. 
The  very  numbers  of  Baptists  made  the  situation 
appalling. 

The  census  of  1920  shows  that  the  Baptists  of  the 
United  States  now  have  7,835,250.  The  Northern 
Baptist  Convention  reports  1,253,878,  the  Southern, 
3,199,005,  the  National  Baptist  Convention  (col¬ 
ored)  ,  3,116,325.  These  numbers  which  involve  cor¬ 
responding  resources  impose  responsibilities  for  the 
Christianization  of  the  world  from  which  we  must 
not  shrink. 


IV 


THE  BAPTIST  OUTLOOK 

THIS  enormous  expansion  of  the  denomination  in 
recent  years  should  not  be  the  occasion  for  pride 
and  seif-exaltation  but  for  a  more  sober  realization 
of  our  responsibilities  and  opportunities,  Mr.  Glad¬ 
stone  remarked  shortly  before  his  death,  when  he 
was  informed  of  the  size  of  American  fortunes,  that 
a  fortune  of  $100,000,000  would  be  a  menace  to  the 
Republic.  In  his  view,  the  possession  of  such  vast 
power  could  not  be  safely  entrusted  to  one  person,  no 
matter  how  well-meaning  and  patriotic.  Since  Mr. 
Gladstone’s  time  several  American  fortunes  have 
been  larger  than  a  hundred  million,  and  there  are 
many  corporations  whose  resources  are  practically 
wielded  by  one  man,  that  control  much  greater  capi¬ 
tal.  That  more  serious  evils  have  not  resulted  from 
these  vast  aggregations  of  power  is  a  tribute  to  the 
moral  principles  of  those  in  positions  to  wield  their 
power.  But  Mr.  Gladstone’s  warning  is  not  unneces¬ 
sary.  The  menace  is  always  present. 

There  is  significance  in  the  fact  that  our  Lord’s 
temptations  at  the  outset  of  his  career  all  turn  on 
the  use  of  power.  No  more  subtle  and  powerful 
assault  can  be  made  on  moral  principle.  This  is 
precisely  the  temptation  that  confronts  our  denom¬ 
ination  today.  We  may  fail  to  recognize  and 
respond  to  the  responsibilities  that  our  numbers  and 

85 


86 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


resources  involve.  The  fact  that  we  are  entrusted 
with  two  or  five  talents  may  lead  us  to  play  the  part 
of  the  man  with  one  talent. 

Let  us  now  glance  at  some  of  the  conditions  for 
the  realization  of  the  superb  opportunities  that  open 
before  our  denomination. 


I 

The  first  of  these  is  loyalty  to  our  historic  Baptist 
principles.  I  do  not  think  that  it  is  so  difficult  to 
describe  what  these  are  as  some  appear  to  think.  In 
my  view,  the  essential  Baptist  principle  is  clear-cut 
and  definite.  It  centers  about  the  response  of  the 
human  soul  to  the  revelation  of  God  in  Christ.  In 
that  vital  central  principle  are  involved  religious  lib¬ 
erty,  the  authority  of  the  Scripture,  the  Deity  of 
Christ,  the  evangelical  theology,  and  the  constitution 
of  the  church. 

I  am  not  unmindful  that  in  the  last  three  cen¬ 
turies  the  Baptists  have  stood  for  many  different 
things.  Their  positions  have  necessarily  been  influ¬ 
enced  by  the  issues  of  the  times,  by  the  current  inter¬ 
pretations  of  the  Scriptures,  and  by  the  spiritual  vis¬ 
ion  of  their  leaders.  But  in  the  history  one  salient 
fact  emerges,  and  that  is  that  the  stream  of  the 
Baptist  movement  has  shown  the  power  of  running 
water  to  purify  itself,  and  the  denominational  inter¬ 
pretation  of  the  gospel  has  constantly  been  closer 
and  closer  to  the  New  Testament  and  the  mind  of 
Christ. 

It  is  amazing,  when  we  come  to  think  of  it,  from 


The  Baptist  Outlook 


87 


how  many  vagaries  and  fanaticisms  we  have  been 
delivered.  We  have  suffered  from  them.  They  still 
survive  in  some  sections  but,  as  a  whole,  the  denom¬ 
ination  has  been  delivered  from  them.  Those  early 
Swiss  Baptists  who  gave  us  the  Schleitheim  Con¬ 
fession  were  not  only  extreme  passivists,  but  they 
did  not  believe  that  the  true  Christian  should  hold 
office,  bear  arms,  or  have  anything  to  do  with  affairs 
of  State.  Hiibmaier  opposed  this,  and  his  conten¬ 
tion  practically  gained  way.  John  Smyth  maintained 
that  the  Scriptures  should  only  be  used  in  public  in 
the  original  Greek  and  Hebrew,  and  then  recited  and 
not  read  from  a  book.  Until  almost  our  own  time 
strict  Baptists  in  England  held  themselves  so  aloof 
from  the  currents  of  English  life  and  tradition  that 
they  were  almost  wholly  alien  to  the  political,  social, 
and  literary  movement  of  the  age.  They  adopted 
not  the  Puritanism  of  Milton,  but  of  Praise  God 
Barebones.  In  our  own  country  there  were  many  of 
those  who  founded  Rhode  Island  who  sympathized 
with  the  narrow  views  of  Roger  Williams’  first 
stage.  In  the  Middle  States  and  the  South  there 
were  those  who  stood  for  the  strictest  observance  of 
Biblical  precedent,  even  to  foot-washing  and  the 
“  holy  kiss.”  At  one  time  it  looked  as  if  a  great  sec¬ 
tion  of  the  denomination  would  be  riven  apart  by  the 
hyper-Calvinists,  who  practically  denied  the  place  of 
means  in  the  economy  of  grace,  antagonized  revivals 
and  Sunday  schools  and  all  missionary  enterprises. 
At  another  period  Campbellism  made  such  inroads 
upon  denominational  coherence  that  for  a  time  it 


88 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


looked  as  if  the  work  of  a  century  was  to  be  undone 
in  a  year.  And  there  have  been  other  movements 
and  tendencies  that  probably  are  in  your  minds, 
which  have  been  equally  significant  and  disruptive, 
but  the  amazing  thing  is  how  the  good  ship  has 
righted  itself  in  every  storm  or,  to  change  the  figure, 
it  is  wonderful  how  by  virtue  of  an  inner  coherence 
the  body  has  resisted  divisive  tendencies.  Our 
churches  have  shown  a  saving  common  sense.  There 
has  been  a  sound  core  that  has  never  been  corrupted 
or  weakened.  And  while  I  speak  subject  to  correc¬ 
tion,  I  wish  to  express  my  deliberate  conviction,  as  a 
student  of  history,  that  denominational  coherence  of 
unity  never  stood  on  a  firmer  basis  than  it  does 
today.  What  James  Russell  Lowell  says  of  democ¬ 
racy  is  true  of  us.  “  Democracy,”  he  says,  “  is  like 
a  raft.  You  can’t  sink,  but  your  feet  are  always 
wet.” 

The  reason  for  this  inherent  soundness  and  coher¬ 
ence,  in  my  judgment,  is  to  be  found  in  our  basal 
position  of  the  supreme  importance  of  the  response 
of  the  human  soul  to  the  revelation  of  God  in  Christ ; 
in  other  words,  in  our  emphasis  upon  the  regenerate 
life,  which  finds  its  formal  expression  in  believer’s 
baptism.  That  is  the  doctrine  that  has  separated  us 
from  every  other  denomination,  and  our  entire  his¬ 
tory  and  growth  is  an  illuminated  comment  on  its 
significance  and  worth  in  the  Christian  system. 

Let  me  indicate  how  this  central  faith  has  worked 
out  in  practise.  The  Philadelphia  Confession,  which 
is  our  oldest  and  by  far  our  most  widely  accepted 


The  Baptist  Outlook 


89 


creedal  statement,  and  is  the  Presbyterian  Westmin¬ 
ster  Confession  modified  so  as  to  conform  to  the 
Baptist  position  regarding  the  Church  and  its  rela¬ 
tion  to  the  State,  contains  an  article  on  the  Bible,  of 
which  my  old  teacher  the  great  historian,  Dr.  Philip 
Schaff,  used  to  say, 

No  other  Protestant  symbol  has  such  a  clear,  judicious, 
concise  and  exhaustive  statement  of  this  fundamental  article 
of  Protestantism. 

I  presume  that  this  article  is  familiar  to  all,  but  lest 
it  should  not  be  fresh  in  anyone’s  memory  let  me 
quote  a  sentence  or  two.  After  enumerating  the 
canonical  books,  it  says : 

The  authority  of  the  Holy  Scripture,  for  which  it  ought  to 
be  believed  and  obeyed,  dependeth  not  upon  the  testimony  of 
any  man  or  church,  but  wholly  upon  God  (who  is  truth  itself) 
the  Author  therof ;  and,  therefore,  it  is  to  be  received  because 
it  is  the  Word  of  God. 

We  may  be  moved  and  induced  by  testimony  of  the  Church 
to  a  high  and  reverent  esteem  of  the  Holy  Scripture,  and  the 
heavenliness  of  the  matter,  the  efficacy  of  the  doctrine,  the 
majesty  of  the  style,  the  consent  of  all  the  parts,  the  scope 
of  the  whole  (which  is  to  give  all  glory  to  God) ,  the  full  dis¬ 
covery  it  makes  of  the  only  way  of  salvation,  the  many  other 
incomparable  excellencies  and  the  entire  perfection  thereof, 
are  arguments  whereby  it  doth  abundantly  evidence  itself  to 
be  the  Word  of  God;  yet,  notwithstanding,  our  full  persuasion 
and  assurance  of  the  infallible  truth  and  divine  authority 
thereof,  is  from  the  inward  work  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  bearing 
witness  by  and  with  the  Word  in  our  hearts. 

This  is  a  most  remarkable  statement,  “  resting  the 
authority  of  the  Scripture,”  as  Doctor  Schaff  said, 

G 


90 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


upon  its  own  intrinsic  excellence,  and  the  internal  testimony 
of  the  Spirit,  rather  than  upon  the  external  authority  of  the 
Church,  however  valuable  this  is  as  a  continuous  witness. 

Baptists  do  not  expect  that  the  convincing  evi¬ 
dence  for  the  authority  of  the  Scripture  will  be  the 
result  of  argument  about  it;  they  do  not  believe  that 
the  true  method  of  approach  is  that  of  seeking  to 
enforce  its  claims ;  they  hardly  expect  the  unregen¬ 
erate  soul  to  accept  them,  but  the  Christian  experi¬ 
ence  answers  to  the  Scripture  as  the  mirror  answers 
to  the  face,  and  a  center  of  certainty  is  begotten  in 
the  soul  of  man  by  the  testimony  of  the  Spirit.  It 
is  exceedingly  interesting  to  observe  how  the  experi¬ 
ence  of  missionaries  confirms  this.  They  tell  us 
that  it  is  impossible  to  make  an  impression  on  the 
heathen  mind  by  starting  with  a  doctrine  of 
inspiration,  or  by  elaborating  any  external  evi¬ 
dences,  no  matter  how  cogent  they  may  be  to  the 
mind  of  the  preacher.  The  process  invariably  fol¬ 
lows  the  line  of  the  response  of  the  hearer  to  the 
truth,  to  which  his  own  heart  and  life  bear  witness 
through  conscience  and  the  work  of  the  Spirit.  And 
just  as  our  fathers  who  accepted  this  great  Con¬ 
fession  did  not  believe  that  the  authority  of  the 
Scripture  rested  upon  human  arguments,  however 
strong  they  might  be,  so  they  did  not  believe  that 
its  authority  could  be  invalidated  by  arguments. 
The  believer  had  the  witness  in  himself. 

This  emphasis  upon  the  regenerate  life  and  upon 
Christian  experience  indicates  the  process  by  which 
all  the  great  Christian  doctrines  are  vindicated. 


The  Baptist  Outlook 


91 


The  method  of  Jesus  in  the  training  of  the  Twelve 
is  exceedingly  illuminating.  Nothing  can  be  clearer, 
unless  we  are  to  eliminate  the  sixteenth  chapter  of 
Matthew  from  the  gospel  record,  than  that  Jesus 
said  nothing  to  his  disciples  about  his  divinity  until 
very  shortly  before  his  death.  That  conversation  at 
Csesarea-Phillipi  must  be  placed  somewhere  near  the 
Crucifixion.  For  the  space  of  some  years  he  had 
been  living  with  this  chosen  group.  They  had  seen 
his  manner  of  every-day  life,  they  had  witnessed  his 
miracles,  they  had  heard  his  parables.  He  had  made 
no  high  claims  about  himself  except  to  call  himself 
the  Son  of  man.  He  had  just  been  living  with  them 
and  letting  that  life  make  its  natural  impression.  At 
last,  as  the  shadows  of  the  end  were  lengthening 
about  him,  and  his  own  intuitive  spirit  discerned  the 
Cross,  he  asked  the  question,  “  Who  do  men  say  that 
the  Son  of  man  is?”  Their  answer  was  ready: 
“  Some  say  John  the  Baptist,  others  Elijah,  others 
Jeremiah  or  one  of  the  prophets.”  And  then  came 
the  intimate  delicate  query.  If  ever  the  lips  of  Jesus 
quivered  it  must  have  been  when  he  asked  that  ques¬ 
tion.  It  was  like  the  question  that  a  man  puts  to 
the  woman  of  his  heart,  when  he  must  know  how  she 
regards  him.  Peter  without  hesitation  responded, 
“  Thou  art  the  Christ,  the  Son  of  the  living  God.” 
And  Jesus  answered  him,  “  You  are  a  blessed  man, 
Simon,  son  of  Jonas,  for  it  was  my  Father  in  heaven, 
not  flesh  and  blood,  that  revealed  this  to  you.” 
Goethe  says  1  that  Jesus  from  his  youth  upward 


1  Carlyle,  “  Goethe,”  p.  88. 


92 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


dares  to  equal  himself  with  God,  nay,  to  declare  that  he  is 
God;  astounding  his  familiar  friends  and  irritating  the  rest 
against  him. 

That  is  exactly  what  Goethe  might  have  done,  but  it 
is  exactly  what  Jesus  did  not  do.  On  the  contrary, 
he  lived  a  natural  human  life,  as  son  and  brother  and 
neighbor,  as  laboring  man  and  leader  of  a  company 
of  young  men,  his  friends.  How  much  more  it  meant 
to  have  these  friends  come  slowly,  almost  imper¬ 
ceptibly,  to  the  great  conviction  expressed  by  Peter 
in  a  flash  of  insight — come  to  it  because  they  must, 
because  no  other  view  would  explain  what  they  felt 
about  him,  than  to  say  this  about  him  because  they 
were  echoing  the  opinion  or  conclusion  of  some  one 
else !  In  the  latter  case  it  would  probably  be  “  say¬ 
ing,”  and  that  would  be  all  it  signified.  In  the 
former  instance  the  confession  would  spring  out  of 
the  heart  of  personal  conviction,  reached  through 
the  paths  of  spiritual  experience. 

II 

In  the  second  place,  our  history  has  taught  some¬ 
times,  through  bitter  experience,  the  nature  and  lim¬ 
itations  of  this  Christian  liberty.  Our  doctrine  of 
religious  liberty  necessarily  comes  from  our  central 
principle.  Force  of  any  sort  has  no  relation  to  con¬ 
victions  or  to  love.  These  inward  persuasions  can¬ 
not  be  brought  about  by  any  external  pressure. 
They  must  come  as  the  voluntary  movement  of  the 
human  soul,  and  if  they  are  not  voluntary  they  are 
unreal  and  hypocritical.  The  story  of  our  mainte- 


93 


The  Baptist  Outlook 


nance  of  religious  liberty  on  the  Continent  of 
Europe,  in  Great  Britain,  in  this  country,  especially 
in  New  England  and  in  Virginia,  is  one  of  the  most 
heroic  in  the  long  annals  of  the  triumph  of  the  cause 
of  human  freedom.  One  is  amazed  as  he  studies 
the  details  of  that  long  contest,  unhappily  not  ended 
yet  in  some  so-called  Christian  lands,  at  the  forti¬ 
tude,  the  strength  of  conviction,  the  readiness  to 
sacrifice  the  most  precious  possessions  and  relations 
for  the  vindication  of  this  sovereign  right  of  the 
human  spirit. 

Our  Baptist  fathers  were  not  generally  acute 
philosophers  or  trained  reasoners,  but  they  were 
never  seduced  by  the  assertion  that  toleration  and 
liberty  were  the  same  thing.  Toleration  is  for  me 
to  say  to  you,  “  I  will  permit  you  to  exercise  this 
privilege; ”  Liberty  is  for  you  to  say  to  me :  “  I  do 
not  want  your  permission,  I  will  have  none  of  it. 
I  do  not  claim  a  privilege.  I  exercise  a  right  which 
you  have  no  title  to  give  or  to  withhold.”  Baptists 
have  always  stood  for  liberty,  and  they  grounded 
their  position  on  the  fact  that  the  acceptable  worship 
and  service  of  God  must  be  unconstrained,  volun¬ 
tary,  otherwise  it  was  worthless. 

The  struggle  is  not  over.  One  is  disheartened  at 
times  by  seeing  how  faint  and  partial  the  recognition 
of  this  principle  is,  even  in  our  own  country,  under 
the  pressure  of  circumstances  and  under  the  influ¬ 
ences  that  are  leading  to  the  centralization  and 
extension  of  the  powers  of  government  as  an  after- 
math  of  the  World  War. 


94 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


The  direction  in  which  we  have  sometimes  erred 
has  been  a  natural  one.  Our  assertion  of  liberty  has 
sometimes  led  to  the  exercise  of  an  unethical  and 
divisive  independency.  Sometimes  it  has  almost  been 
assumed  that  the  hall-mark  of  a  thorough-going 
Baptist  was  disagreement  with  some  one  else,  and  too 
often  it  has  been  not  a  disagreement  with  the  doc¬ 
trines  and  practises  of  other  Christian  communions, 
but  a  disagreement  with  those  of  the  same  household 
of  faith.  We  need  today,  perhaps  not  so  much  as 
formerly,  but  still  we  need  today  clearer  expositions 
in  all  our  conventions  and  associations  and  local 
churches  of  the  limitations  of  liberty  as  conceived  by 
Baptists.  Liberty  is  not  a  unifying  principle.  You 
could  not  organize  a  ball  club,  or  a  literary  circle,  or 
a  chamber  of  commerce  on  the  idea  that  every  mem¬ 
ber  should  do  as  he  pleases,  which  is  what  too  many 
mean  by  liberty.  But  that  is  not  what  Baptists  have 
meant  by  religious  liberty.  They  mean  the  right 
of  each  person  to  be  free,  uncoerced,  in  forming  his 
religious  associations,  but  having  once  chosen  his 
affiliation,  liberty  is  limited  by  the  general  position 
or  genius  of  the  body  with  which  he  unites.  We  part 
with  some  share  of  our  liberty  whenever  we  cooper¬ 
ate  with  others.  It  does  not  make  much  difference 
whether  the  relationship  is  that  of  marriage  or  a 
business  partnership  or  a  political  affiliation  or 
church-membership.  The  principle  is  the  same  in 
all.  The  unifying  tie  in  all  these  relationships  is 
not  liberty,  but  the  agreements  of  ideals,  which 
constitute  the  reason  for  the  existence  of  the  organ- 


The  Baptist  Outlook 


95 


ization.  Some  associations  make  the  unifying  princi¬ 
ple,  which  in  political  parties  we  call  “  the  platform,” 
and  in  ecclesiastical  bodies  “  the  creed  ”  or  “  the 
covenant,”  very  narrow  and  stringent.  Others  make 
it  loose  and  general,  but  always,  even  in  the  most 
liberal  churches,  there  is  some  line  which  the  mem¬ 
bers  cannot  overpass  without  being  disfellow- 
shiped. 

No  one,  to  my  way  of  thinking,  has  expounded 
the  true  principle  of  human  association  and  coopera¬ 
tion  more  adequately  than  Prof.  Franklin  H.  Gid- 
dings,  of  Columbia  University,  in  his  essay,  “  The 
Mind  of  the  Many.”  2 

Professor  Giddings  gives  St.  Paul  the  credit  of 
being  the  first  to  announce  the  true  principle  of 
social  organization.  It  rested  upon  the  fact  of  like- 
mindedness  : 

Over  and  over  again  he  forces  this  fact  upon  the  attention 
of  his  readers  and  warns  them  to  give  heed  to  it.  “  Be  of 
the  same  mind  one  toward  another,”  he  says  to  the  Romans; 
and  in  the  same  epistle  he  prays  for  them  that  they  may  be 
of  the  same  mind,  that  with  one  accord  and  with  one  mouth 
they  may  glorify  their  God.  The  Corinthians  he  beseeches 
to  “  speak  the  same  things,”  to  “  have  no  divisions  ”  among 
them,  that  they  may  be  “  perfected  together  in  the  same 
mind  and  in  the  same  judgment.”  And  the  Philippians  he 
implores  to  “stand  fast  in  one  spirit,  with  one  soul;  to  be 
of  the  same  mind,  having  the  same  love,  being  of  one  accord.” 
.  .  .  So  far  as  we  know,  neither  Greek  nor  Jew,  before 

Paul,  ever  singled  out  this  principle  as  the  all-essential 
fact  to  be  remembered  in  the  development  of  any  plan  of 
social  organization. 

2  “  Democracy  and  Empire,”  p.  49f. 


96 


1  he  Baptist  Heritage 


Professor  Giddings  adds: 

Speaking  only  for  myself,  I  must  say  that  after  many 
years  of  persistent  thought  upon  this  question,  I  am  fully  per¬ 
suaded  that  Paul  was  absolutely  and  profoundly  right  .  .  . 
What  then  is  a  society?  Obviously,  it  is  any  number  of  like- 
minded  individuals,  who  know  and  enjoy  their  like-minded¬ 
ness,  and  are,  therefore,  able  to  work  together  for  common 
ends  .  .  .  But  as  certainly  as  like-mindedness  is  the 

cause  of  social  stability,  so  is  unlike-mindeddess  the  cause 
of  social  variation.  Only  as  men  differ  and  dare  to  differ 
from  their  fellows  can  the  church  or  party  adapt  itself  to 
new  conditions.  Mere  variation  is  not  necessarily  progress, 
and  there  is  no  progress  to  be  discovered  in  division  or  in 
disorganization.  A  progressive  society  must  change  with¬ 
out  losing  its  identity.  In  a  progressive  society  a  certain 
degree  of  unlike-mindedness  coexists  with  a  large  measure 
of  like-mindedness.  Progress,  in  short,  is  the  continuous 
harmonizing  of  a  continually  appearing  unlikeness  of  feeling, 
thought  and  purpose  with  a  vast  central  mass  of  established 
agreements. 

I  think  we  all  recognize  the  justice  of  this  expo¬ 
sition  and  its  fidelity  to  the  superb  insight  and  dis¬ 
covery  of  St.  Paul.  This  fits  our  denominational 
problem.  It  is  to  harmonize  a  vast  central  mass  of 
established  agreements  with  the  variations  and 
unlikenesses  which  are  the  secret  of  progress  and 
advance.  It  is  the  ever-recurring  contest  between 
Conservatism  and  Progress.  For  the  Conservatives 
to  have  their  way  would  be  to  bring  about  social 
Nirvana.  For  the  Progressives  to  have  their  way 
would  be  disruption  and  ruin.  In  a  sense,  every 
church,  as  well  as  the  entire  denomination,  has  to 
settle  this  problem  for  itself.  What  Conservatives 


The  Baptist  Outlook 


97 


everywhere  need  to  realize  and  to  act  upon  is  that 
there  are  rights  of  dissent,  and  that  to  restrict  them 
within  the  narrow  limits  too  often  drawn  by  the 
least  competent,  is  to  doom  the  organization  to  a 
hopeless  alliance  with  dead  past.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  Progressives  need  to  realize  that  there  are  limits 
to  dissent,  perhaps  not  easily  definable  in  words,  but 
nevertheless  inherent  in  the  genius  of  the  organiza¬ 
tion,  which  cannot  be  transcended  without  peril  to 
major  interests. 

Our  denominational  history  is  strewn  with  wrecks 
from  failure  to  recognize  these  principles.  We  have 
grown  and  prospered  in  spite  of  these  losses.  Still, 
one  cannot  help  thinking  how  much  larger  service 
we  might  have  rendered  if  it  had  not  been  for 
these  tragedies. 


ill 

Another  thing,  it  seems  to  me,  a  study  of  our  his¬ 
tory  enforces,  and  that  is  the  cleansing  and  enlight¬ 
ening  power  upon  ourselves  of  propagating  the 
Christian  gospel,  of  evangelization,  which  means  the 
proclamation  of  “  the  good  news,”  the  missionary 
task  at  home  and  abroad  in  all  the  earth.  The 
supreme  duty  of  the  Christian  individual  and  of  the 
Christian  people  is  the  bearing  of  witness.  “Ye 
shall  be  my  witnesses  both  in  Jerusalem,  and  in  all 
Judea,  and  Samaria,  and  to  the  uttermost  parts  of 
the  earth”  (Acts  1  :  8).  “  Ce  ye  therefore,  and 

make  disciples  of  all  nations,  baptizing  them  in  the 
name  of  the  Father,  and  of  the  Son,  and  of  the  Holy 


98 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


Ghost,  teaching  them  to  observe  all  things  whatso¬ 
ever  I  commanded  you  ”  (Matt.  28  :  19) .  These  are 
the  last  recorded  words  of  Jesus,  as  reported  by 
Luke  and  by  Matthew,  and  loyalty  to  them  has  been 
the  secret  of  purity  of  doctrine,  of  spiritual  agree¬ 
ments,  and  of  triumphant  enthusiasm.  There  have 
been  many  sermons,  discussions,  and  volumes  on  mis¬ 
sionary  conquests,  but  comparatively  little  attention 
has  been  paid  to  the  reaction  of  witness-bearing 
upon  the  inner  life  and  the  spiritual  vision  of  those 
who  have  been  loyal  to  the  great  commandments. 
Nothing  ever  did  more  for  our  denomination  in 
England  than  the  great  insight  and  enterprise  of 
William  Carey,  and  in  our  own  country  it  may  be 
said  that  the  message  of  Judson  and  Rice  to  the 
feeble  and  scattered  Baptist  churches  of  the  Atlan¬ 
tic  Coast  really  created  the  denomination.  Then  as 
the  men  of  Boston  and  Virginia  and  Georgia  began 
to  respond  to  that  moving  appeal,  the  churches  came 
to  a  denominational  self-consciousness  which  has 
never  yet  been  dissipated  or  seriously  weakened. 
Even  the  terrific  strain  of  the  Civil  War  did  not 
destroy  it,  and  for  many  years  a  letter  from  a  Bap¬ 
tist  church  has  passed  at  its  face  value  everywhere. 
It  is  as  good  in  New  Hampshire  as  in  Texas,  or 
Nova  Scotia,  or  Saskatchewan.  And  today  nothing 
is  more  certain  to  revive  the  inner  life  of  a  church, 
to  cleanse  its  faith  and  to  lift  it  into  the  realm  of 
unity  and  peace  than  zealous  enlistment  in  the  work 
of  carrying  the  gospel  to  others.  It  has  been  justly 
said  that  Wyclif  was  a  rebel  against  the  Church  of 


The  Baptist  Outlook 


99 


his  day,  but  he  interpreted  the  nobler  and  more  per¬ 
manent  convictions  of  Christendom  when  he  main¬ 
tained  that  “  preaching  was  the  best  work  a  priest 
could  do,  better  than  praying  or  administering  the 
sacraments.” 

And  we  have  always  been  in  peril  of  a  serious 
error  when  we  have  failed  to  see  that  the  command 
of  “  the  Great  Commission,”  as  it  is  called,  is  simply 
the  expression  of  the  genius  of  the  religion  of  Jesus. 
It  is  not  an  arbitrary  order,  such  as  might  be  given 
to  a  servant  or  a  soldier,  a  direction  that  he  is  simply 
to  obey  without  an  inner  response  to  its  reasonable¬ 
ness  and  necessity.  The  story  of  the  Duke  of  Well¬ 
ington,  who  said  that  the  missionary  had  but  one 
task  and  that  was  to  look  at  his  “  marching  orders,” 
“  the  Great  Commission,”  and  obey  it,  wholly  misses 
the  finer  aspects  of  the  Christian’s  relationship  to 
the  gospel.  “  I  call  you  no  longer  servants  but 
friends,  for  the  servant  knoweth  not  what  his  Lord 
doeth.”  The  man  who  has  really  caught  the  spirit 
of  Christ,  and  been  deeply  moved  by  the  gospel,  real¬ 
izing  what  it  does  for  him,  cannot  help  seeking  to 
share  his  blessing  with  others.  One  of  the  great 
missionary  texts  of  the  New  Testament  is  in  the 
Epistle  of  James :  “  If  a  brother  or  sister  be  naked, 
and  in  lack  of  daily  food,  and  one  of  you  say  unto  him, 
‘  Go  in  peace,  be  ye  warmed  and  filled/  and  ye  give 
not  them  the  things  that  are  needful  for  the  body; 
what  doth  it  profit?”  (James  2  :  15,  16.)  Our 
times  have  greatly  responded  to  these  words  taken 
literally,  but  too  many  of  us  have  missed  their  finer 


100 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


and  larger  implications.  We  have  failed  to  realize 
that  there  is  a  spiritual  nakedness  and  starvation, 
and  that  these  spiritual  needs  make  their  own  mighty 
appeal  to  the  Christian  heart.  The  bare  command  of 
“  the  Great  Commission  ”  may  be  sufficient  for  the 
legalist,  but  the  Christian  is  not  a  legalist,  and  he 
realizes  that  witness-bearing  unto  all  the  earth,  so 
far  as  we  can  reach,  is  duty  and  privilege  wrought 
into  the  very  genius  of  the  Christian  revelation. 

Paul  writes  to  the  Galatians,  “  Who  did  bewitch 
you,  before  whose  eyes  Jesus  Christ  was  openly  set 
forth  crucified?”  (Gal.  3  :  1.)  What  exactly  did 
he  mean?  Those  Galatian  Christians  had  never 
seen  Christ.  They  were  not  present  at  the  cruci¬ 
fixion.  It  is  clear  that  what  was  in  his  mind  was 
that  when  Christ  was  preached  to  them  for  the  first 
time  the  tragedy  of  redemption  was  enacted  in  their 
experience.  Before  they  heard  the  gospel,  it  was 
as  though  Christ  had  never  lived  and  died.  But 
when  they  heard  it  they  were  brought  into  relation 
with  it.  Then,  “  Christ  was  openly  set  forth  the 
crucified.”  May  we  not  dare  reverently  to  draw  the 
sublime  inference  from  this  declaration,  and  declare 
that  when  we  are  preaching  the  gospel  we  are  doing 
what  God  did  when  he  sent  his  Son  into  the  world, 
for  we  are  bringing  men  into  relation  with  him? 
And  the  gift  of  God  in  the  Cross  of  Christ  is 
bestowed  in  the  preaching  of  the  gospel.  Then  the 
ultimate  motive  to  evangelization  becomes  sympathy 
with  God.  We  share  his  work;  we  enter  into  deep 
interior  fellowship  with  his  love  and  his  purpose  of 


The  Baptist  Outlook 


101 


grace.  These  are  the  reasons  why  the  work  of 
propagating  the  gospel  reacts  so  profoundly  upon 
the  life  of  the  Christian.  It  is  not  simply  because  we 
are  obeying  a  command  in  doing  this,  though  that 
has  its  own  peculiar  reward,  but  because  in  doing 
this  we  sympathize  with  the  spiritual  nakedness 
and  hunger  of  those  who  do  not  have  the  gospel, 
and  because  we  sympathize  with  the  gracious  pur¬ 
poses  of  God. 

The  history  of  our  denomination  amply  illustrates 
the  spiritual  rewardfulness  of  the  missionary  enter¬ 
prise.  On  the  whole,  it  shows  that  the  reaction  upon 
our  churches  from  propagating  the  gospel  at  home 
and  abroad  has  been  the  principal  factor  in  purify¬ 
ing  our  theology  and  emphasizing  our  profound 
agreements  in  the  evangelical  faith.  The  command 
of  conscience  is  authoritative  in  the  realm  of  action, 
just  as  the  demand  of  reason  is  imperative  in  the 
realm  of  thought.  And  the  harmony  of  the  two  is 
realized  when  the  two  obediences  unite  in  a  common 
devotion. 


IV 

In  the  last  place,  our  history  demonstrates  the 
importance  of  education,  and  especially  of  an  edu¬ 
cated  ministry.  Perhaps  one  of  the  bitterest  con¬ 
flicts  ever  waged  in  the  denomination  has  centered 
about  the  need  of  an  educated  ministry.  Both  the 
Northern  and  Southern  churches  were  profoundly 
agitated  by  it,  and  while  the  cause  of  education  has 
won  all  along  the  line,  there  is  skirmish  fighting  still 


102 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


going  on,  and  there  is  still  much  to  be  done  for  a 
complete  victory.  Through  monotheism  was  the 
great  message  of  Israel,  and  though  Jesus  said  that 
the  first  and  great  commandment  is,  “  Hear,  0 
Israel,  the  Lord  our  God  is  one,  and  thou  shalt 
love  the  Lord  thy  God  with  all  thy  heart,  and  with 
all  thy  soul,  and  with  all  thy  mind  and  with  all  thy 
strength  ”  (Mark  12  :  29f.),  and  though  we 
declare,  if  we  use  the  so-called  Apostles’  Creed,  “  I 
believe  in  one  God,  Father  Almighty,  Maker  of 
heaven  and  earth,”  though  all  these  voices  testify 
to  monotheism,  as  a  matter  of  fact  many  Chris¬ 
tians  are  really  polytheists ;  they  do  not  believe  that 
the  God  who  gave  us  the  revelation  of  the  gospel  is 
the  God  who  made  the  sea,  and  whose  hands  fash¬ 
ioned  the  dry  land,  and  they  show  that  they  do  not 
by  seeking  to  antagonize  religion  with  science  or  sci¬ 
ence  with  religion.  If  one  Deity  made  the  world 
and  another  gave  us  the  gospel,  there  may  well  be 
antagonism  between  the  two  realms,  because  the  two 
gods  do  not  agree,  just  as  Homer  tells  us  of  the 
quarrels  between  the  gods  of  Mt.  Olympus.  But  if 
we  believe  in  “  One  God,  Father  Almighty,  Maker 
of  heaven  and  earth,”  the  antagonism,  if  there  be 
any,  in  the  nature  of  the  case,  must  be  between  our 
imperfect  or  false  interpretations  of  the  works  and 
the  word  of  God.  The  two  revelations  interpret  one 
another,  and  the  clearest  vision  of  either  is  bound 
up  in  the  amplest  knowledge  of  the  other.  In  a  day 
when  pure  and  applied  science  have  made  such  enor¬ 
mous  advances,  so  that  every  sane  mind  is  bewil- 


The  Baptist  Outlool? 


103 


dered  with  them,  it  is  not  open  to  religious  men, 
if  the}'  are  monotheists,  to  slur  or  disparage  the 
teaching  of  science.  Scientific  men  are  by  no  means 
infallible,  and  theologians  have  not  invariably  been 
impeccable.  The  more  the  teacher  of  religion  knows 
of  modern  science  the  better.  x4  large  mastery  of  it 
might  enable  him  more  adequately  to  use  the  method 
of  Jesus,  and  to  see  in  the  falling  sparrow  the  wit¬ 
ness  to  law  and  purpose,  as  centuries  later  Newton 
saw  them  in  the  falling  apple,  and  to  see  in  the  red¬ 
dening  sky  at  eventime  a  witness  to  the  law  and 
purpose  that  moves  through  human  history.  But 
without  laboring  the  argument,  it  seems  to  me  that 
we  all  admit  that  the  preacher  of  the  gospel  should 
speak  from  a  rich  and  ample  and  worthy  inner  life. 

When  .John  Calvin  organized  his  school  at  Geneva 
for  the  training  of  ministers,  he  brought  thither  the 
best  teachers  in  Europe.  No  modern  college  presi¬ 
dent  was  ever  more  ambitious  in  organizing  a  fac¬ 
ulty  to  secure  the  most  competent  instruction  than 
was  John  Calvin.  But  Calvin  soon  woke  up  to  the 
realization  of  another  fact,  and  that  was  that  an 
educated  ministry  demands  an  educated  laity.  His 
reasoning  was  this :  We  cannot  have  the  Scriptures 
adequately  expounded  except  by  trained  men.  The 
Bible  itself  touches  so  many  civilizations,  embodies 
so  many  interests,  impinges  on  life  at  so  many  points 
that  it  can  only  be  justly  interpreted  by  those  of  the 
best  equipment,  and  only  educated  hearers  can  ade¬ 
quately  respond  to  such  unfoldings  of  divine  truth. 
That  was  the  logical  basis  of  Calvin’s  appeal  and  sac- 


104 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


rifice  in  founding  the  famous  university  at  Geneva, 
which  still  flourishes.  There  is  no  break  in  that 
logic.  And  it  was  this  irrefutable  line  of  reasoning, 
and  not  any  vague  theory  of  democracy,  that  planted 
the  school  beside  the  church  on  the  bleak  hills  of 
Scotland,  at  Montauban  and  Nismes  and  La  Rochelle, 
and  wherever  the  Calvinists  settled  in  France,  in 
New  England  villages,  on  Western  prairies,  and  in 
Southern  counties. 

We  must  have  an  educated  ministry  adequately 
to  interpret  the  gospel,  and  an  educated  laity  to 
respond  to  the  gospel.  The  demand  for  education 
comes  from  the  nature  of  the  gospel  itself.  This  is 
not  to  say  that  great  results  may  not  be  brought 
about  by  the  preaching  of  unlettered  men.  This  is 
not  to  say  that  education  can  take  the  place  of  per¬ 
sonal  piety  and  the  constant  blessing  of  the  Holy 
Spirit,  but  it  is  to  say  that  if  the  preaching  of  the 
gospel  means  something  more  than  the  repetition  of 
a  formula,  if  it  means  the  utterance  of  a  living  man 
who  has  responded  with  all  his  nature — heart  and 
intellect  and  will — to  the  Christian  revelation,  we 
must  have  ministers  and  laymen  who,  like  Moses  and 
St.  Paul,  have  brought  the  treasures  of  discipline 
and  learning  to  the  service  of  God.  It  is  often  said 
that  men  like  Mr.  Moody  have  wrought  great  results 
without  the  aid  of  the  schools.  That  is  true,  and  we 
rejoice  in  it.  Mr.  Moody  was  a  great  man  and 
would  have  been  great  in  any  task  for  which  he  had 
any  aptitude,  but  Mr.  Moody  showed  what  he 
thought  of  education  in  making  the  principal  task 


The  Baptist  Outlook 


105 


of  his  later  years  the  founding  of  the  Northfield 
Schools. 

No  two  men  have  ever  exercised  such  a  profound 
and  far-reaching  influence  for  good  on  American 
religious  life  as  Jonathan  Edwards  and  John  Wes¬ 
ley.  In  their  light  we  still  walk,  and  both  were 
the  product  of  the  very  best  training  the  schools 
could  afford.  I  sometimes  feel,  as  I  turn  over  the 
pages  of  the  Bible,  as  I  felt  when  I  first  entered 
Westminster  Abbey.  There  in  the  great  Minster  you 
are  surrounded  by  the  memorials  of  the  men  who 
have  made  England  great — generals  and  statesmen, 
orators  and  poets,  viceroys  and  sea-captains,  philan- 
thropis  ts  an  d  preachers  of  the  gospel.  The  great  of 
a  mighty  empire  are  remembered  here.  It  is  so  with 
the  Bible.  How  few  insignificant,  ordinary  men  are 
mentioned  in  its  pages.  Kings  and  prophets,  states¬ 
men  and  warriors,  historians  and  poets,  teachers  and 
preachers  crowd  its  pages.  As  you  read  those  pages 
you  walk  with  many  of  the  great  ones  of  the  earth. 
Why,  to  understand  Mr.  Gladstone’s  or  Lloyd 
George’s  career  demands  long  study  and  superb 
training.  To  understand  Moses  or  Isaiah  or  Jere¬ 
miah!  Do  you  think  that  any  one  who  can  simply 
write  and  cipher  is  competent  for  that  high  task? 
And  when  we  come  to  a  comprehension  and  appre¬ 
ciation  of  the  Supreme  Personality  of  all  ages,  Jesus, 
the  Son  of  God,  our  Lord  and  Saviour — !  'Who  is 
sufficient  for  that  mighty  work?  The  best  we  can 
bring  of  knowledge  and  of  training  is  far  from 
enough. 


106 


The  Baptist  Heritage 


It  is  one  of  the  brightest  signs  of  the  times  that 
throughout  America,  in  the  United  States,  North  and 
South,  and  in  Canada,  there  is  a  revived  interest  in 
education,  and  especially  in  training  men  for  the 
exacting  tasks  of  the  Christian  ministry. 

It  used  to  be  said  that  the  Baptists  had  a  spe¬ 
cial  mission  to  the  middle  and  lower  classes,  and 
that  perhaps  they  should  not  expect  to  reach  the  rich, 
the  cultivated,  and  the  highly  placed.  That  asser¬ 
tion  was  an  implication  that  we  were  charged  with 
a  partial  gospel,  and  we  were  without  a  universal 
appeal. 

The  evolution  of  our  history  has  refuted  this  posi¬ 
tion,  and  today  not  only  in  numbers  but  in  wealth, 
in  education,  and  in  standing  the  members  of  our 
churches  occupy  no  mean  place.  A  fair  proportion 
of  the  business  leaders,  the  renowned  scholars,  law¬ 
yers,  medical  men,  and  statesmen  of  the  day  are 
Baptists.  In  the  adaptation  of  our  message  to  the 
manifold  needs  of  human  life,  the  Pauline,  the  Chris¬ 
tian  universality  of  our  gospel  has  been  triumphantly 
vindicated.  Furthermore,  in  an  age  when  democ¬ 
racy  is  prevalent,  and  the  scientific  spirit  is  every¬ 
where  demanding  the  verification  of  fundamental 
assumptions,  our  polity  is  in  accord  with  the  demo¬ 
cratic  temper,  and  our  emphasis  upon  Christian 
experience  affords  a  present  witness  to  the  gospel. 

Certainly  our  lines  have  fallen  upon  a  great  oppor¬ 
tunity.  No  denomination  has  a  greater.  And  as  we 
look  at  the  pit  from  which  we  have  been  digged,  may 
we  not  see  in  our  trials  and  sufferings,  in  the  mis- 


The  Baptist  Outlook 


107 


understandings  and  persecutions  to  which  we  have 
been  subjected,  a  divine  discipline  and  training  for 
the  largest  service?  But  this  service  is  not  to  be  ren¬ 
dered  by  reliance  upon  our  heroic  past,  or  by  our 
confidence  in  our  present  resources.  There  is  a  ten¬ 
dency  in  all  Protestant  churches  to  put  an  overween¬ 
ing  trust  in  organization,  in  mechanism,  and  in 
creedal  formulations.  Am  I  wrong  in  thinking  that 
the  only  hope  for  the  triumph  of  vital  Christianity 
in  the  earth  is  in  the  truth  we  affirm  when  we  say, 
“  I  believe  in  the  Holy  Ghost.”  There  is  no  ground  of 
hope  for  the  Christian  victory  but  in  the  living 
Christ,  in  whose  hands  are  all  the  fortunes  of  this 
world  and  of  the  cosmos. 

There  are  two  ways  of  making  a  ship  safe.  You 
may  anchor  it  by  steel  cables  in  a  protected  harbor, 
but  she  is  not  so  safe  there  against  a  tempest  as  she 
is  if  you  slip  every  cable  and  send  her  forth  on  the 
high  seas,  held  only  by  the  unseen  but  mighty  bond 
between  the  compass  needle  and  the  pole  star.  Any 
steel  cable  may  be  broken.  No  driving  wind  or 
mighty  seas  can  snap  the  tie  between  the  needle  and 
the  star.  And  the  pledge  of  the  safety  and  the  tri¬ 
umph  of  the  cause  of  Christ  is  not  in  our  mechan¬ 
isms,  however  skilful,  or  in  our  Philadelphia  or 
New  Hampshire  Confessions,  however  exact  or 
Scriptural,  but  in  the  tie  that  binds  Christ's  people 
to  Him,  the  Living  One,  and  in  their  loyalty  to  it. 


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